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The films contenders for the 2023 Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay are All Quiet on the Western Front, Glass Onion, Living, Top Gun: Maverick, and Women Talking. Our odds currently show that “Women Talking” (10/3) will win the award, followed in order of likelihood by “All Quiet on the Western Front” (37/10), “Glass Onion” (9/2) , Top Gun: Maverick (9/2) and Living (9/2).
Glass Onion and Top Gun: Maverick, which are respectively the first sequels to 2019’s Knives Out and 1986’s Top Gun, are the first two sequel films ever to be nominated against each other in this category. Among the seven sequels that have already competed here are winners The Godfather Part II (1975) and The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (2004), and nominees Before Sunset (2005 ), Toy Story 3 (2011), Before Midnight (2014), Logan (2018) and Borat Subsequent Moviefilm (2021).
From the 11 individual authors in this year’s lineup only Sarah Poley (“Women Talking”) has previously competed for this special award. She was previously nominated for writing and directing Away from Her (2008), as with Women Talking. Three other current adapted nominees have competed for Best Original Screenplay in the past, with Christopher McQuarrie (“Top Gun: Maverick”) after winning his 1996 bid for The Usual Suspects. Also included in this subset is one of McQuarrie’s Top Gun: Maverick co-writers, Eric Warren singer (“American Hustle,” 2014) and “Glass Onion” screenwriter Ryan Johnson (“knife out”).
Polley would be only the ninth woman to win an Oscar for adaptive writing. Since Sian Heder (“CODA”) triumphed last year, it would also mark the first instance of consecutive women’s wins in category history. The women who preceded Heder were here Sarah Y Mason (“Little Women”, 1934), Claudine West (“Mrs. Miniver”, 1943), Ruth Prawer Jhabvala (“A Room with a View”, 1987 and “Howards End”, 1993), Emma Thompson (“Sense and Sensibility”, 1996), Philippa Boyens And Fran Walsh (“The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King”) and Diana Ossana (“Brokeback Mountain”, 2006).
McQuarrie has a chance to become the 14th person to win both writing Oscar categories, right after Ethan Coen And Joel Coen (Original: Fargo, 1997; Adapted: No Country for Old Men, 2008). The other members of this group who got their original victories first are Alan Jay Lerner (“An American in Paris”, 1952; “Gigi”, 1959), Ring Lardner Jr. (“Woman of the Year”, 1943; “M*A*S*H”, 1971), Francis Ford Coppola (“Patton”, 1970; “The Godfather”, 1973 and “The Godfather Part II”) and William Goldman (“Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid,” 1970; “All the President’s Men,” 1977).
Winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2017, Oscars newcomer Kazuo Ishiguro (“Life”) follows George Bernard Shaw only the second Nobel Prize winner to subsequently receive Film Academy recognition in any category. Shaw received the same Nobel Prize in 1925 and won Best Adapted Screenplay in 1939 for Pygmalion (based on his own 1913 play).
The remaining six Oscar rookies in this group are split evenly across All Quiet on the Western Front and Top Gun: Maverick. The former trio consists of Edward Berger, Lesley PatersonAnd Ian Stokellwhile the latter includes Peter Craig, Honor KruegerAnd Justin Marks.
The most recent films to win in this category are CODA (2022), The Father (2021), Jojo Rabbit (2020) and BlacKkKlansman (2019). This year’s winner will be announced during the 95th Annual Academy Awards, which will air March 12 on ABC.
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