Unfortunately, The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences is somewhat notorious for its unique ability to make confounding and often times anger-inducing selections when choosing the Oscar winners each year. Film fans angrily expressing their dismay at the Academy’s choices on the night of the awards has become something of a historic tradition. When it comes to the 21st century, though, one particular blunder stands above the rest: Tom Hooper triumphing over David Fincher in the 2010 Best Director race.
The decision to award Hooper for his work on The King’s Speech instead of Fincher for The Social Network was certainly questionable at the time, but has become much more egregious in the past 15 years given the legacies of both films and their filmmakers. While The King’s Speech has faded into some level of obscurity with its director experiencing an up-and-down career since his Oscar win, The Social Network is regarded as a modern masterpiece and the crowning achievement of Fincher’s legendary career. Due to this, Fincher’s Best Director loss at the 83rd Academy Awards has come to be known as the shining example of the famed director’s supposed Oscar curse.
‘The Social Network’ and ‘The King’s Speech’ Have Vastly Different Legacies

It wouldn’t be unfair to suggest that, in 2025, most people consider Hooper’s story of King George VI to be a perfectly fine piece of Oscar bait that achieved its goals at the time but failed to find any real staying power in the culture. It is not a movie that large swaths of film fans have a deep and meaningful relationship to today. On the other hand, The Social Network is widely thought of as an unquestionably great cinematic achievement. It is a film that continues to become more and more relevant with each passing year, cemented by the fact that at the end of 2019 it found itself at or near the top of many “Best of the Decade” lists.
Obviously, Fincher was a key reason for his film’s impressive level of success. In fact, The Social Network most likely would not have worked in the same way with a different director at the helm. Fincher operated as the perfect foil for the film’s acclaimed screenwriter, Aaron Sorkin. The Se7en and Fight Club director’s trademark dark and cynical sensibility was needed to bring out the most in Sorkin’s tremendous script. Fincher clearly had a deep understanding of the character of Mark Zuckerberg and the proper way to portray him, to a degree that we probably didn’t even realize in 2010. The decisions he made in the portrayal of Facebook’s founder are key factors in the film’s continued relevancy, making it feel like an essential movie that dares to dive in to what has become a major part of the modern human experience.

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The post-2010 career health of Fincher and Hooper also supports the idea that the wrong director took home Oscar gold that year. While Hooper has shown he is a capable and talented director throughout his somewhat inconsistent career, Fincher is still universally recognized as a master of his craft. The King’s Speech director did receive more Oscar recognition after his Best Director win with the releases of Les Misérables and The Danish Girl, though his career has been fairly quiet since he directed the infamous 2019 adaptation of Cats. Fincher worked in film sparingly throughout the 2010s, but has released four excellent movies since The Social Network. Unfortunately, though, the Academy still has yet to give him his crowning moment.
David Fincher Has Been Consistently Snubbed by the Academy Throughout His Career

Image via Netflix 

Lamentably, Fincher’s 2010 Oscar loss fits right in with the legendary director’s disappointing history at the Oscars. In his career, which spans more than 30 years, he has been nominated just three times with zero wins. Aside from The Social Network, he was nominated for Best Director for his work on The Curious Case of Benjamin Button and Mank. In total, Fincher’s 12 movies have garnered 40 nominations and nine wins from the Academy. It’s worth noting that 31 of those nominations, and eight of the nine wins, came from the three films that got him a Best Director nom. With his disowned debut, Alien 3, accounting for one visual effects nomination, this means that Se7en, The Game, Fight Club, Panic Room, Zodiac, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, Gone Girl, and The Killer were only worthy of eight nominations and one win, according to the Academy.

Fincher’s misfortune at the Oscars lands him on the strange and embarrassingly-long list of directors who did not — or have not — won a Best Director award. This list includes Stanley Kubrick, Alfred Hitchcock, Paul Thomas Anderson, Quentin Tarantino, Spike Lee, Akira Kurosawa, Sergio Leone, Orson Welles, Robert Altman, Jean-Luc Godard, and David Lynch. The existence of this list alone proves the Academy often makes the wrong choice. Whether or not Fincher one day makes it off the list, the fact will always remain that his first Best Director win should have come from The Social Network.

The Social Network

Release Date

October 1, 2010

Runtime

121 minutes

Writers

Ben Mezrich, Aaron Sorkin

Producers

Ceán Chaffin, Dana Brunetti, Kevin Spacey, Scott Rudin