2024 Oscar Predictions: ADAPTED SCREENPLAY and ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY (May)

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I’m kicking off my early 2024 Oscar predictions this season with Adapted Screenplay and Original Screenplay, a full four months earlier than last year. Why? Last year’s crop of adapted screenplays was pretty bleak early on and even as the fall festival season started and right through to nominations.

This year, Adapted Screenplay is looking much more healthy; not only populated with former winners in the category but potentially holding some major Best Picture contenders, too. From Killers of the Flower Moon, Oppenheimer, Poor Things and The Killer, we have some very high profile titles angling for a spot. Taika Waititi, who won this award for 2017’s Jojo Rabbit, has his very, very long in post-production entry Next Goal Wins.

Original Screenplay could see the return of Emerald Fennell, who won here for her 2020 directorial debut film Promising Young Woman, could be back with her follow-up Saltburn, which stars Oscar nominees Barry Keoghan, Rosamund Pike, Carey Mulligan and Richard E. Grant. You can pencil in Alexander Payne’s The Holdovers, starring Oscar nominee Paul Giamatti. Payne isn’t credited with the script (that would be David Hemingson) but as a two-time winner in adapted screenplay, he might as well be for voters and I can see Payne earning a ‘story by’ credit here at the end of the day. The new Todd Haynes film, May December, starring Natalie Portman and Julianne Moore, is curiously without distribution as it heads into Cannes competition next week but I can’t imagine that will last long so it earns a spot here.

Speaking of credits, it’s also still early as to how some film’s screenplays could be designated, both by the WGA and the Academy, which have disagreed in the past. Is Barbie an original screenplay? It’s not ‘based on previously published material’ as the phrasing goes for distinctions between the categories. It’s based on a toy, albeit one that has spawned dozens of direct to video animated films, but it’s most likely going to land here. Same goes for Hayao Miyazaki’s How Do You Live?, which is inspired by the 1937 novel of the same name but not a direct adaptation.

Here are my 2024 Oscar predictions in Adapted Screenplay and Original Screenplay for May 2023.

ADAPTED SCREENPLAY

1. Killers of the Flower Moon (Apple Original Films/Paramount Pictures)
2. The Color Purple (Warner Bros)
3. Poor Things (Searchlight Pictures)
4. Oppenheimer (Universal Pictures)
5. Dune Part Two (Warner Bros)
6. The Zone of Interest (A24)
7. The Nickel Boys (MGM/UAR/Orion Pictures)
8. Dumb Money (Sony Pictures)
9. The Killer (Netflix)
10. The Bikeriders (20th Century Studios)

Other contenders and/or possible 2024 releases: The Actor (NEON), Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret (Lionsgate), BlackBerry (IFC Films), The Boys in the Boat (MGM), Carmen (Sony Pictures Classics), Earth Mama (A24), Eileen (NEON), Ferrari (STX Entertainment), Flint Strong (Amazon Studios/MGM), Foe (Amazon Studios), Freud’s Last Session (Sony Pictures Classics), How Do You Live? (GKIDS), Nyad (Netflix), Long Day’s Journey Into Night (MGM), Mothers’ Instinct (NEON), The Piano Lesson (Netflix), Society of the Snow (Netflix), Spaceman (Netflix), Strangers (Searchlight Pictures), The Supremes at Earl’s All-You-Can-Eat (Searchlight Pictures), Wonka (Warner Bros)

Without U.S. distribution: The Collaboration (TBD), Conclave (TBD), Firebrand (TBD), Gonzo Girl (TBD), Lee (TBD), Limonov: The Ballad of Eddie (TBD), Wicked Little Letters (TBD), Without Blood (TBD)

ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY

1. The Holdovers (Focus Features)
2. Past Lives (A24)
3. Saltburn (Amazon Studios)
4. Drive-Away Dolls (Focus Features)
5. Maestro (Netflix)
6. Barbie (Warner Bros)
7. The Iron Claw (A24)
8. Air (Amazon Studios)
9. Fair Play (Netflix)
10. May December (TBD)

Other contenders or possible 2024 releases: Asteroid City (Focus Features), Back to Black (Focus Features), Black Flies (Open Road Films), Blitz (Apple Original Films), Bob Marley: One Love (Paramount Pictures), The Book of Clarence (Sony Pictures), The Burial (Amazon Studios), Cassandro (Amazon Studios), Challengers (MGM), La Chimera (NEON), Civil War (A24), Fingernails (Apple Original Films), Holland, Michigan (Amazon Studios), How Do You Live? (GKIDS), A Little Prayer (Sony Pictures Classics), Napoleon (Apple Original Films/Sony Pictures), The Persian Version (Sony Pictures Classics), Priscilla (A24), Rustin (Netflix), Shirley (Netflix), Theater Camp (Searchlight Pictures), A Thousand and One (Focus Features)

Without U.S. distribution: Anatomy of a Fall (TBD), The Book of Solutions (TBD), A Different Man (TBD), Hitman (TBD), Lost in the Night (TBD), Memory (TBD), The New Boy (TBD), One Life (TBD), The Outrun (TBD)

Image courtesy of Searchlight Pictures