The Academy voters sometimes seem to use the screenplay categories as a way to acknowledge a film they like but that they aren't voting for Best Picture or Best Director. Spreading the wealth, a bit. As in recent screenplay winners
Belfast, Get Out, Manchester by the Sea, Call Me By Your Name, BlacKkKlansman, and
The Big Short. All of those were also written or co-written by their directors. But that isn't to say the screenplay awards are always used for an attaboy runner-ups, certainly, as recent Best Picture winners
CODA, Parasite, Green Book, Spotlight, Birdman, and
Moonlight all won writing Oscars for their directors. All of the nominees in this category are writer/directors and all five are nominated here and Best Director, and all five of their films are up for Best Picture. Which makes handicapping this category a little tough.
Ruben Östlund is extremely unlikely to win Best Director and not much better odds for his screenplay. It is good that he has broken the nomination barrier, but he’ll have to wait for a subsequent project to give him a shot at actually winning and comfort himself with the international prizes he has already won. While Östlund may have too dark and twisted a vision to ever win an Oscar,
Todd Field seems almost destined to win one of these films. His first two movies,
In the Bedroom and
Little Children, garnered him Adapted Screenplay nominations and
Tár lands him here. Doesn’t seem to be enough momentum behind the movie to get a win, but the actor/writer/director is three for three in quality output, as far as his Academy brothers and sisters are concerned.
The Banshees of Inisherin is
Martin McDonagh’s third nomination in this category (
In Bruges and
Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri). If the votes go elsewhere for Picture and Director this may be the voters’ best chance to reward him. If he doesn’t win this year I wouldn’t bet against it happening eventually. Four features in and he has six nominations plus his win for his live-action short
Six Shooter.
Like Field and McDonagh,
Tony Kushner is also enjoying his third nomination. The Pulitzer Prize and Tony Award winning author of
Angels in America is on his fourth film with
Steven Spielberg, following
Munich, Lincoln, and
West Side Story, having been nominated for the first two projects. Spielberg is an impossibly famous and successful filmmaker and he has been credited as a co-writer before including his early own projects
Close Encounters of the Third Kind and
The Sugarland Express plus projects he produced such as
Poltergeist and
The Goonies as well as taking over and reworking Kubrick’s
A.I. – Artificial Intelligence. While Spielberg has TWENTY-ONE nominations as a director and producer, this is his first as a writer. Of course being a version of his own life it is appropriate. The momentum for Best Picture and Best Director seems to be moving away from
The Fabelmans so his admirers may choose to reward his most personal film yet in this category especially as his co-writer is an incredibly respected and honored playwright. It may make them the team to beat. Kenneth Branagh won this award just last year for his autobiographical
Belfast.
The Daniels just won the Directors Guild of America Award for
Everything Everywhere All at Once. That does make them heavy favorites to repeat as Best Director at the Oscars. IF that does come to pass that doesn't mean there can't be splits with Best Picture or here for Original Screenplay. But if you think this is one of those years where one movie might steamroll over a bunch of these categories it could well be the year for Daniels Kwan & Scheinert. And while their multiverse tale may not be unique to comic book aficionados, surely the overlapping realities and the fun they have with it may well strike the average Oscar voter as wildly original?
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