How do people end up directing a top-grossing movie?

I have received a few questions from readers about the path to becoming a top movie director, prompted by a recent Substack post entitled “The Annenberg Ouroboros” by Hollywood Gadfly.The article critiques the work of the USC Annenberg Inclusion Initiative, which studies the gender of top-grossing directors, the festival circuit, animation, visual effects, and more. Hollywood Gadfly raised several objections to their work and methodology, including whether it is fair to treat the gap between the share of women directing at Sundance and the share directing top-grossing films as evidence of a broken pipeline.The chart below is one such example of how Annenberg makes the case, highlighting the Sundance figure at 63.6% (in 2026) and the top-grossing directors at just 6.6% (2007-25).Leaving aside that these figures cover very different periods, this raises the question:Is there a pipeline from being selected in the US Dramatic Competition at Sundance to top flight directing?I studied the…