Tony McNamara will repeat BAFTA wins for ‘The Favourite’ with ‘Poor Things’
“Poor Things” has performed well throughout this awards season, winning Best Comedy/Musical Film at the Golden Globes and snagging 11 Oscar nominations in total. That is the same number of awards the Searchlight Pictures movie was nominated for at the BAFTAs, where we predict it to perform well.
One person who is set to have a good night at the British film awards is Tony McNamara, who adapted Alasdair Gray‘s 1992 novel of the same name. McNamara previously worked with Emma Stone on “Cruella” and “The Favourite,” the latter of which was another Yorgos Lanthimos film. McNamara co-wrote that period piece with Deborah Davis. The duo was nominated for Best Adapted Screenplay at the Oscars in 2019 but lost to “Green Book” (Brian Currie, Peter Farrelly, and Nick Vallelonga).
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However, they won the BAFTA for Best Adapted Screenplay, over “Cold War” (Janusz Głowacki and Paweł Pawlikowski), “Green Book,” “Roma” (Alfonso Cuarón), and “Vice” (Adam McKay). The film won six other BAFTAs in total, including Best Actress for Olivia Colman, Best Supporting Actress for Rachel Weisz, and Best British Film. McNamara shared in the latter award as a producer, alongside Lanthimos, Davis, Dempsey, Ed Guiney, and Lee Magiday.
McNamara is the sole scribe this time around and he is nominated alongside “The Zone of Interest” (Jonathan Glazer), “All of Us Strangers” (Andrew Haigh), “American Fiction” (Cord Jefferson) and “Oppenheimer” (Christopher Nolan). McNamara is the clear favorites to win here.
He was nominated at both the Golden Globes and the Critics Choice Awards but lost both races. The Globes only have a combined screenplay category — Best Screenplay — and “Anatomy of a Fall” (Justine Triet and Arthur Harari), which competes at the Oscars for Best Original Screenplay, won there. Meanwhile, “American Fiction” edged out “Poor Things” to win Best Adapted Screenplay at the Critics Choice Awards. However, we still think “Poor Things” will triumph at the BAFTAs. This is a British film and BAFTA will stick with their own, as they proved when “The Favourite” won Best Original Screenplay over eventual Oscar champion “Green Book.”
McNamara is also nominated for Best British Film again this year, this time alongside Lanthimos, Guiney, Stone, and Andrew Lowe. They are up against “All of Us Strangers” (Graham Broadbent, Pete Czernin, and Sarah Harvey), “How to Have Sex” (Emily Leo, Ivana MacKinnon, and Konstantinos Kontovrakis), “Napoleon” (Ridley Scott, Kevin J. Walsh, Mark Huffam, and Joaquin Phoenix), “The Old Oak” (Rebecca O’Brien), “Rye Lane” (Yvonne Isimeme Ibazebo and Damian Jones), “Saltburn” (Emerald Fennell, Josey McNamara, and Margot Robbie), “Scrapper” (Theo Barrowclough), “Wonka” (David Heyman, Alexandra Derbyshire, and Luke Kelly), and “The Zone of Interest” (James Wilson and Ewa Puszczyńska).
“The Zone of Interest” and “All of Us Strangers” are sure to be contenders for this award but we are again predicting “Poor Things” to triumph. BAFTA likes to reward auteurist films in this category, with recent winners including “The Banshees of Inisherin,” “Belfast,” “Promising Young Woman,” “1917,” “The Favourite,” and “Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri.”
These are all specific directorial visions from auteur filmmakers and “Poor Things” fits right in with this list. We also know that BAFTA has a taste for Lanthimos and McNamara’s works as they awarded “The Favourite” this prize in 2019. Plus, we also know that BAFTA isn’t afraid to reward the same filmmaker in this category in a short space of time. Martin McDonagh won this award twice with “Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri” in 2018 and “The Banshees of Inisherin” in 2023. So, “Poor Things” is a safe bet in this category.
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