The two Screenplay Oscars can be tricky ones to predict. There are plenty of instances where the runaway, obvious Best Picture front-runner scoops up its corresponding writing award as well, but just as often it goes either to an also-ran as a sort of seeming consolation prize for not being the flick voted in as Best Picture and for Best Director, or it can be a total outlier.
In the last fifteen years the Best Adapted Screenplay has only corresponded to the Best Picture winner four times:
Argo, 12 Years a Slave, Moonlight, and
CODA. Two of the others you can argue were given to likely the consensus second pick for Best Picture:
The Social Network and
The Big Short. But the other nine winners from this period are all over the map, from titles that had little to no realistic shot at Best Picture:
Precious, The Descendants, The Imitation Game, Call Me By Your Name, BlacKkKlansman, Jojo Rabbit, The Father, Women Talking, and
American Fiction. Last year when
American Fiction beat out
Oppenheimer, Barbie, Poor Things, and
Zone of Interest it really highlighted how unpredictable this award can be.
What about this year's crop?
Writer/Directors often seem to have an upper hand here. Especially if it is a consolation prize for not winning Best Director.
Emilia Pérez's Jacques Audiard and
A Complete Unknown's James Mangold are the Director nominees who also wrote the screenplays, though they are both credited co-writers. Audiard is one of four writers. As another general rule, projects with more than two writers have a tougher time winning. Going back to 1958, there were only three instances where the Adapted Screenplay had three or four credited writers:
Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (three),
The Descendants (three), and
BlacKkKlansman (four). I would estimate somewhere around a one-percent chance
Emilia Pérez joins them, and not only because it is a mess.
On the other hand, Mangold, who co-wrote
A Complete Unknown with longtime Scorsese collaborator Jay Cocks, has a better chance. This is Cocks' third nom, following
Gangs of New York and
The Age of Innocence, and Mangold's second as a writer, having gotten a nod for
Logan. Musician Biopics have saturated the market in recent years, but
A Complete Unknown cleverly avoids some of the more worn clichés by letting Dylan's music and lyrics do most of the speaking. Of the movie's eight nominations, only Timothée Chalamet's Best Actor seems like a favorite in its category, but if Mangold were to get an attaboy for his effort it would come here, not Best Director or Best Picture.
Somehow RaMell Ross' wonderful
Nickel Boys only wound up with two nominations. Though they were two of the "Big Eight", in Best Picture and Best Adapted Screenplay. Director Ross shares the screenplay credit with Joslyn Barnes for their adaptation of Colson Whitehead's Pulitzer Prize winning novel. The big decision in the adaptation was to tell the story by using the camera as character, a first-person point-of-view where what the audience sees is supposed to be replicating what one of the characters is seeing. While I am sure that was all very well thought out in the script stage and by zillions of storyboards, it would seem to me the real praise for pulling off that concept should have resulted in Best Director and Best Cinematography nominations. It did not.
Nickel Boys did win the Writers Guild of America (WGA) Award. Unlike some of the other various Hollywood Guild Awards, the WGA is not always the most useful predictor. For one thing, they often have differing eligibility requirements, and their nominees are usually far from mirror versions of the other. We are in a streak where the last three winners have lined up (
American Fiction, Women Talking, and
CODA). But this year the only other duplicated nominee between the Oscars and WGAs was
A Complete Unknown. The other WGA nominees were
Dune: Part Two, Hitman, and
Wicked.
The literary pedigree of
Nickel Boys and this being really the only way to reward it may indeed push it to the top of the Oscar ballot. But I wouldn't say it is the clear-cut favorite, either.
Like
Nickel Boys,
Sing Sing deserved more attention and nominations than it got. Colman Domingo's better-late-than-never career bloom continues with his well-earned acting nomination, but as wonderful a story and movie as it is, it won't win here. The director, Greg Kwedar, is one of the four credited writers, all of whom are enjoying their first nominations. With four writers and being one of only three nominations, there isn't much of a chance they'll win, which is too bad. Leaving...
Conclave received eight nominations. For it to break through and win Best Picture it would have to do so without its director being nominated, which is possible but exceedingly rare. Where it does have maybe its best chance to be recognized is right here, as Best Adapted Screenplay. Peter Straughan is not the film's director, but this is his second Academy nod, having been nominated for the 2011 adaptation of
Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, which lost to
The Descendants. Will his gripping adaptation of Robert Harris' novel about the behind the closed Vatican doors selection of a Pope be the next Oscar winner?
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