Oscar Predictions: Best Original & Adapted Screenplay

The Oscars are coming up yet again. The guilds, Globes, BAFTAs, and critics have all made their picks. Now it's my turn to figure out what it all means with my multi-part Oscar predictions.

I'm going to go through each of the Oscar categories, tell you what has been nominated and won elsewhere, and order the nominees from who I think is most to least likely to win on Oscar night. That doesn't mean I'll be right, but it does mean I'll be informed. Wish me luck.

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Previously:

Introduction & Documentary Feature

Production Design & Visual Effects

Sound Mixing & Sound Mixing

Costume Design & Makeup and Hairstyling

Animated Feature & International Film

Original Song & Original Score 
Cinematography & Film Editing

 

Glossary:

BAFTA - British Academy of Film and Television Arts Awards

Golden Globe - Award presented by the Hollywood Foreign Press Association

WGA - Writers Guild of America Awards

Best Original Screenplay

(In Order of Likelihood)

1. Parasite

Golden Globes - Screenplay – Nominee

WGA - Original Screenplay - Winner

BAFTA - Original Screenplay - Winner

2. Once Upon a Time in Hollywood

Golden Globes - Screenplay – Winner

WGA - Ineligible

BAFTA - Original Screenplay - Nominee

3. Marriage Story

Golden Globes - Screenplay – Nominee

WGA - Original Screenplay - Nominee

BAFTA - Original Screenplay - Nominee

4. 1917

WGA - Original Screenplay - Nominee

5. Knives Out

WGA - Original Screenplay - Nominee

BAFTA - Original Screenplay - Nominee

Tracking the screenplay precursors is kind of a mess. The Golden Globes combine Original and Adapted into a single category. The Writers Guild has a bunch of eligibility rules, so it’s hard to know why something wasn’t nominated. And, just to add to the confusion, occasionally, the Oscars will change the classification of a movie from Original to Adapted Screenplay. That means Moonlight won the Original Screenplay WGA award in 2016 and the Adapted Screenplay Oscar. Confused yet? Good.

Here’s what I do know. The BAFTA Original Screenplay award is sort of useful, matching the Oscar winner 11 of the last 20 years. 7 of the last 10 times the Golden Globe winner was an Original Screenplay, that movie also won the Oscar. The last 16 times that the Oscar winner was eligible for the WGA Award and there weren’t any shenanigans with the categorization*, it also won the WGA Award. In short, if I remove all qualifiers, all of the last 20 Original Screenplay Oscar winners won at least one of those three awards.

*In 2016, the Original Screenplay Oscar winner, Manchester By the Sea lost to Moonlight for the WGA Award. Moonlight then competed for and won the Adapted Screenplay Oscar.

So where does that leave things? Knives Out and 1917 are right out. No precursor wins for either. Marriage Story also has no wins, but some voters just really love Noah Baumbach’s writing. They gave The Squid and the Whale its lone Oscar nomination back in 2005.

Realistically, this is between Once Upon a Time in Hollywood (the Golden Globe winner) and Parasite (the BAFTA and WGA winner). Hollywood wasn’t eligible for the WGA Award, so you can throw that win out. Taratino is a two-time winner for writing. The Academy sure loves awarding his writing as a consolation for not giving him a Best Director award or picking his films for Best Picture. The fact that’s he’s already won twice sure cuts down on the urgency to award him again. And, unlike a lot of movie screenplays, the Academy members are very aware of who wrote that screenplay. Notice how I didn’t even say I was talking about Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, but you knew that’s the one I was talking about? Meanwhile, Parasite has all the momentum. Even the stars of Hollywood are gushing over Bong Joon Ho and company at events. The only thing I could see stopping it from winning this award is that the movie is Korean. Even though voters are provided with an English translation, that could hurt it with a lot of older voters. This very much seems like the consolation prize since 1917 likely has Best Director locked up.

Best Adapted Screenplay

(In Order of Likelihood)

1. Jojo Rabbit

BAFTA - Adapted Screenplay - Winner

WGA - Adapted Screenplay – Winner

2. Little Women

BAFTA - Original Screenplay - Nominee

WGA - Adapted Screenplay – Nominee

3. Joker

BAFTA - Original Screenplay - Nominee

WGA - Adapted Screenplay – Nominee

4. The Irishman

Golden Globes - Screenplay – Nominee

BAFTA - Adapted Screenplay - Nominee

WGA - Adapted Screenplay – Nominee

5. The Two Popes

Golden Globes - Screenplay – Nominee

BAFTA - Original Screenplay - Nominee

The precursors are even more confusing to break down for the Adapted Screenplay award. I could only find which films were ineligible for the WGA Award going back to 2010. What I can determine though is that the last 18 years that I know for a fact that the Oscar winner was eligible, it won the WGA award 16 times. This year’s Golden Globe winner was an Original Screenplay, which doesn’t tell us anything here. The Adapted Screenplay Oscar winner did have a Golden Globe nomination at least 15 of the last 20 years. The BAFTA winner matched the Oscar winner 9 of the last 19 years*. Important to this year’s stats, 8 of the last 9 times that a movie won at least 2 of these 3 precursors, it went on to win the Oscar. The only exception was Up in the Air losing to Precious in 2009, which I don’t have a great explanation for.

*I excluded the weird Moonlight year.

Applying all that to this year’s race, I only see two movies with a decent chance to win. Jojo Rabbit and Little Women. Joker, The Irishman, and The Two Popes don’t have the precursor wins or the narrative. Little Women doesn’t have the wins either. It has a bit of a narrative though. Greta Gerwig, who wrote and directed the movie, was left out of the Best Director field. The Academy has taken some heat for another all-male Director field and for the fact that a female screenwriter hasn’t won since Diablo Cody for Juno (2007). On a leadership level, the Academy would love for Greta Gerwig to win this award (and it wouldn’t be undeserved). Time and time again though, the voters don’t like to be told what to do. If they are going to anoint a winner, they want to believe it was their idea.

I think back to the Original Screenplay win for Spike Lee last year vs. the Green Book win for Best Picture. Here me out. The Spike Lee win was positioned as voters agreeing that it’s about time for Spike Lee to win something. They could feel good about that pick. So that win happened. Meanwhile, voters kept being told they were racists or regressive if they picked Green Book for Best Picture. Many chaffed at that and picked Green Book because the campaign against it felt more like an attack. So, I don’t think it’ll work for Greta Gerwig here, because I think a lot of voters will look at it like they are being called anti-feminist if they pick someone else. It’s a juvenile response, but it checks out.

That means I feel pretty good about picking Jojo Rabbit to win. It’s a good screenplay. It got the key WGA and BAFTA wins. It lost the Golden Globe to an Original Screenplay. There’s been surprisingly little backlash against the film. There hasn’t been any time for the momentum to shift against it.