WGA Awards Film Nominations: ‘West Side Story’, ‘Dune’, ‘Licorice Pizza’, ‘French Dispatch’ & More

Erik Pedersen
·3 min read
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The Writers Guild of America has penciled in the film nominees for its 74th annual WGA Awards, which will be virtual again this year.

The Original Screenplay category will see the scribes behind Being the Ricardos, Don’t Look Up, The French Dispatch, King Richard and Licorice Pizza vying for the hardware.

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The Adapted Screenplay race will be among CODA, Dune, Nightmare Alley, tick, tick…BOOM! and West Side Story.

On the documentary side, Being Cousteau, Exposing Muybridge and Like a Rolling Stone will battle it out for the WGA trophy.

See the full list of nominated writers and screenplays below.

Winners will be feted at the joint 2022 WGA Awards on Sunday, March 20 — the last majors awards show before the 94th Oscars. This year’s eligibility period is March 1-December 31, 2021.

Read the WGA’s TV nominations here.

The WGAs honor outstanding achievement for original and adapted screenplays and documentary films, but some awards-contending scripts are ineligible because of WGA rules. It’s the only guild that requires a movie to have been produced under its Minimum Basic Agreement in order to be eligible. Those rules (read them here) kept a couple of 2022 awards-season regulars out of the mix today. Among them are Kenneth Branagh’s Belfast for Original Screenplay and Jane Campion’s The Power of the Dog for Adapted — scripts that could be front-runners for the Oscar in their respective categories.

Among the other ineligible screenplays in Original are A Hero, Pig, Mass, Parallel Mothers, Jockey, Flee, The Hand of God, Annette, I’m Your Man and Palme d’Or winner Titane. In the Adapted category, the ineligibles also include The Lost Daughter, Drive My Car, Passing, Cyrano and the year’s highest-grossing film Spider Man: No Way Home.

Watch Tom Holland, Tobey Maguire & Andrew Garfield Reunite To Talk Playing Spider-Man And Why ‘No Way Home’ Was Such An Emotional Experience

Here is the full list of nominations for the 74th annual Writers Guild Awards:

ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY

Being the Ricardos, Written by Aaron Sorkin; Amazon Studios

Don’t Look Up, Screenplay by Adam McKay, Story by Adam McKay & David Sirota; Netflix

The French Dispatch of the Liberty, Kansas Evening Sun, Screenplay by Wes Anderson, Story by Wes Anderson & Roman Coppola & Hugo Guinness & Jason Schwartzman; Searchlight Pictures

King Richard, Written by Zach Baylin; Warner Bros. Pictures

Licorice Pizza, Written by Paul Thomas Anderson; United Artists

ADAPTED SCREENPLAY

CODA, Screenplay by Siân Heder, Based on the Original Motion Picture La Famille Belier Directed by Eric Lartigau, Written by Victoria Bedos, Stanislas Carree de Malberg, Eric Lartigau and Thomas Bidegain; Apple

Dune, Screenplay by Jon Spaihts and Denis Villeneuve and Eric Roth, Based on the novel Dune Written by Frank Herbert; Warner Bros. Pictures

Nightmare Alley, Screenplay by Guillermo del Toro & Kim Morgan, Based on the Novel by William Lindsay Gresham; Searchlight Pictures

tick…tick…BOOM!, Screenplay by Steven Levenson, Based on the play by Jonathan Larson; Netflix

West Side Story, Screenplay by Tony Kushner, Based on the Stage Play, Book by Arthur Laurents, Music by Leonard Bernstein, Lyrics by Stephen Sondheim, Play Conceived, Directed and Choreographed by Jerome Robbins; 20th Century Studios

DOCUMENTARY SCREENPLAY

Being Cousteau, Written by Mark Monroe & Pax Wasserman; National Geographic

Exposing Muybridge, Written by Marc Shaffer; Inside Out Media

Like a Rolling Stone: The Life & Times of Ben Fong-Torres, Written by Suzanne Joe Kai; StudioLA.TV

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