To match her frontrunner status in Best Director, Chloé Zhao finds herself similarly in the pole position for Best Adapted Screenplay for Nomadland. A female screenwriter hasn’t won this category since Diana Ossana in 2005 for Brokeback Mountain, which is an embarrassing statistic the Academy may be looking to rectify, especially for a screenplay as strong as Zhao’s.
With a possible nomination for co-writing Pixar’s Soul, One Night in Miami playwright-turned-screenwriter Kemp Powers could find himself a double nominee in the same year. This would also make Powers the first dual nominee across both screenplay categories since Frances Ford Coppola in 1974 for The Godfather Part II and The Conversation.
A common theme this year will be adaptations of stage plays and musicals, with several playwrights adapting their own work for the screen including Powers, Florian Zeller for The Father, Chad Beguelin and Bob Martin for The Prom, Tom MacRae and Dan Gillespie for Everybody’s Talking About Jamie, and the late Mart Crowley for The Boys in the Band.
BEST ADAPTED SCREENPLAY PREDICTIONS:
1. Nomadland (Searchlight Pictures)
Chloé Zhao
2. Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom (Netflix)
Ruben Santiago-Hudson
3. One Night in Miami (Amazon Studios)
Kemp Powers
4. The Father
Christopher Hampton, Florian Zeller
5. News of the World (Universal Pictures)
Luke Davies, Paul Greengrass
MAJOR CONTENDERS:
The Boys in the Band (Netflix)
Mart Crowley, Ned Martel
Cherry (AppleTV+)
Jessica Goldberg, Andela Russo-Otstot
Everybody’s Talking About Jamie – (20th Century Studios)
Tom MacRae, Dan Gillespie
First Cow (A24)
Kelly Reichardt, Jonathan Raymond
French Exit (Sony Pictures Classics)
Patrick deWitt
Hillbilly Elegy (Netflix)
Vanessa Taylor
I’m Thinking of Ending Things (Netflix)
Charlie Kaufman
The Personal History of David Copperfield (Searchlight Pictures)
Simon Blackwell, Armando Iannucci
The Prom (Netflix)
Chad Beguelin, Bob Martin
The United States vs. Billie Holiday – (Paramount Pictures)
Suzan-Lori Parks
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