‘Mudbound’s Dee Rees Makes Oscar History As 1st Black Woman Nominated For Best Adapted Screenplay
On an Oscar nominations morning that saw a strong showing for women, Mudbound’s Dee Rees has made some history of her own as the first African America woman ever to be nominated for Writing (Adapted Screenplay).
Breaking another barrier today with Rachel Morrison becoming the first woman to receive a Best Cinematographer nomination, the Netflix feature and Sundance 2017 alum had a total of four nominations for the 90th Academy Awards. Mary J. Blige is also in the running in the Best Supporting Actress category and the Blige performed and Raphael Saadiq and Taura Stinson co-written “Mighty River” is up for Best Original Song.
Collaborating with Virgil Williams on the script for the big screen version of Hilary Jordan’s novel, Rees was surprisingly not nominated for Best Director for what is her fourth feature. In total, Netflix had its best Oscar contenders results ever with eight nominations.
To give a bit more historical context, Suzanne de Passe is the only black woman to ever be nominated for best Original Screenplay as a co-writer of 1972’s Lady Sings The Blues. The Jeremy Larner penned and Robert Redford starring The Candidate won the category at the 45th Academy Awards.
Rees and Williams’ Mudbound screenplay is up against Aaron Sorkin for Molly’s Game, James Ivory’s Call Me By Your Name, Scott Frank, James Mangold and Michael Green for Logan and Scott Neustadter and Michael H. Weber for The Disaster Artist.
Hosted by Jimmy Kimmel on ABC, the 90th Academy Awards will be given out on March 4 in the heart of Hollywood.
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