Oscar predictions: What do last decade of Best Adapted Screenplay winners tell us about this year?

Jacob Sarkisian
·6 min read
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“Poor Things,” “Oppenheimer,” “Killers of the Flower Moon,” “American Fiction,” “All of Us Strangers,” and “Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret” all received Best Adapted Screenplay bids from the Critics Choice Awards thus giving their Oscar hopes in this category a timely boost. Some of them were lauded even further at the Golden Globes, which nominated “Poor Things,” “Oppenheimer,” and “Killers of the Flower Moon” alongside “Barbie,” “Past Lives,” and “Anatomy of Fall” in a combined Best Screenplay category.

So, those are the preferences of those two awards groups. But what about the tastes of the academy? Well, below is a chart detailing the last 10 Oscar winners for Best Adapted Screenplay. We’re going to break this down to see what the academy likes and try to apply the findings to this year’s race.

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As you can see, novels are the academy’s favorite source material, accounting for three out of the last 1o winners: Sarah Polley for “Women Talking,” Taika Waititi for “Jojo Rabbit,” and James Ivory for “Call Me By Your Name.” Meanwhile, there were two winners each for adaptations of plays, memoirs, and non-fiction books. The play winners were Florian Zeller and Christopher Hampton for “The Father” and Barry Jenkins and Tarell Alvin McCraney for “Moonlight.” The memoir winners were Spike Lee, David Rabinowitz, Charlie Wachtel, and Kevin Willmott for “BlacKkKlansman,” and John Ridley for “12 Years a Slave.” And the non-fiction book winners were Adam McKay and Charles Randolph for “The Big Short” and Graham Moore for “The Imitation Game.” There was one outlier — that was Sian Heder‘s win for “CODA,” which was based on the 2014 French-Belgian movie “La Famille Bélier.”

So, novels are the favorite form of adaptations followed by plays, memoirs, and non-fiction books. But what does that mean for this year? Well, we are currently predicting that the following films will be nominated for this award: “Killers of the Flower Moon,” “Oppenheimer,” “Poor Things,” “American Fiction,” and “The Zone of Interest.” Here’s the rundown of each of these.

“Killers of the Flower Moon” chronicles the real-life murders of several Osage tribe members in the 1920s in the USA. The screenplay is written by director Martin Scorsese alongside Eric Roth and is based on the 2017 non-fiction book of the same name by David Grann. Scorsese has previously been nominated twice in this category — in 1991 for “Goodfellas” alongside Nicholas Pileggi and in 1994 for “The Age of Innocence” alongside Jay Cocks. Scorsese has 14 total Oscar nominations to his name including a 2007 win for Best Director for “The Departed.” Roth, meanwhile, won Best Adapted Screenplay in 1995 for “Forrest Gump” while he has five more nominations in this category: in 2000 for “The Insider” with Michael Mann, in 2006 for “Munich” with Tony Kushner, in 2009 for “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button” with Robin Swicord, in 2019 for “A Star is Born” with Bradley Cooper and Will Fetters, and in 2022 for “Dune” with Jon Spaihts and Denis Villeneuve. He also earned a Best Picture bid for “Mank” in 2021. Seeing as this is based on a non-fiction book, we think this one has a good chance.

“Oppenheimer” depicts how J. Robert Oppenheimer created the atomic bomb and is based on the 2005 non-fiction book “American Prometheus” by Kai Bird and Martin J. Sherwin. Christopher Nolan, who directed the movie, adapted the book. Nolan has five total Oscar nominations to his name, including two for writing. The first came in 2002 for “Memento,” which he wrote with his brother Jonathan Nolan. The second came in 2011 for “Inception.” Both were for Original Screenplay.

“Poor Things” follows a young woman who is brought back to life. She subsequently explores the world with untold passion and vigor. The movie is adapted from the 1992 novel by Alasdair Gray with Tony McNamara on script duty. McNamara came close to winning Original Screenplay in 2019 alongside Deborah Davis for “The Favourite” but they lost to “Green Book.”

“American Fiction” is written and directed by Cord Jefferson, who used the 2001 novel “Erasure” by Percival Everett as his source material. The movie follows a Black author who turns to hypocrisy by using a form of art he claims to hate in order to find success. Jefferson has never been nominated for an Oscar.

“The Zone of Interest” director Jonathan Glazer adapted the 2014 novel of the same name by Martin Amis. This tells the true story of Auschwitz commandant Rudolf Höss trying to build a dream life for his wife and family while living next to the concentration camp. Glazer has never been nominated for an Oscar, although this is based on a novel so it may be right up the academy’s street.

So, at the moment, we are predicting that three novel and two non-fiction book adaptations will reap bids. That checks out with what the last 10 winners suggest the academy likes.

There are a couple more factors to consider. Firstly, seven out of those last 10 winners were all written or co-written by the movie’s director: “Women Talking,” “CODA,” “The Father,” “Jojo Rabbit,” “BlacKkKlansman,” “Moonlight,” and “The Big Short.” That strongly suggests that voters admire writer-directors in this category, so that gives a big boost to, well, all of these predicted nominees apart from “Poor Things,” the only one of these five whose script wasn’t by the director.

Secondly, three out of the last 10 winners in this category also won Best Picture — “12 Years a Slave,” “Moonlight,” and “CODA.” And the other seven screenplay champs were nominated for the top prize. That’s an incredible track record. It also checks out here, too, as we think that all five of our predicted Adapted Screenplay nominees will also be nominated for Best Picture.

Plus, we think “Killers of the Flower Moon” will win Best Screenplay and has a great shot at claiming Best Picture, too, which would make it the 25th film in a row to win Best Adapted Screenplay and be nominated for Best Picture. It would also make it the fourth film in 11 years to win both those awards. Let’s see if that happens. For now, our predicted five nominees for Best Adapted Screenplay look like sure-fire things.

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