2025 Oscars: Best Adapted Screenplay Predictions

Nominations voting is from January 8-12, 2025, with official Oscar nominations introduced January 17, 2025. Remaining voting is February 11-18, 2025. And eventually, the 97th Oscars telecast shall be broadcast on Sunday, March 2 and air reside on ABC at 7:00 p.m. ET/ 4:00 p.m. PT. We replace our picks by awards season, so hold checking IndieWire for all our 2025 Oscar predictions.

Prefer it or not, the state of the film enterprise is at a degree the place the Finest Tailored Screenplay dialog begins round which main sequels are Oscar contenders. Even with its tepid important response, it’s onerous to not throw “Inside Out 2” on the checklist when the primary one acquired a Finest Unique Screenplay nomination and gained Finest Animated Function in 2016. Plus, the Pixar movie has been essentially the most profitable 2024 theatrical launch thus far, popping out at a time the place box-office analysts have been able to throw within the towel on the 12 months.

“Dune: Half Two” additionally received the 12 months off to an excellent begin, considerably outgrossing its predecessor and receiving higher critiques. Even with the Writing department’s hesitation round nominating sequels, filmmaker Denis Villeneuve and screenwriter Jon Spaihts, beforehand nominated for “Dune,” are more likely to get credit score once more for his or her assured tackle a sci-fi novel as soon as thought of unadaptable.

Each “Gladiator” and “Joker” acquired screenplay Oscar nominations, so sight unseen each “Gladiator II” and “Joker: Folie à Deux” make the checklist of scripts with Academy Award potential. However as confirmed by “Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga,” a poor efficiency on the field workplace may shortly dampen these odds.

Curiously, contenders “Hit Man” and “Sing Sing” performed on the 2023 Toronto Worldwide Movie Pageant alongside “American Fiction,” which gained this Oscar class in March. Much like Twine Jefferson’s Viewers Award winner, each movies are main crowdpleasers that proved they’ll maintain months of awards conversations and stability humor and coronary heart with their spin on real-life occasions.

Given what number of current winners are literary variations of supply materials printed within the final couple a long time, it’s secure to place an upcoming movie like “The Nickel Boys,” a Colson Whitehead adaptation, or Marielle Heller’s adaptation of Rachel Yoder’s widespread 2021 novel “Nightbitch,” on checklist of screenplays that more likely to be on awards voters’ radars. Nonetheless, desirous about the movies that truly gained this class, like “Jojo Rabbit,” “Ladies Speaking,” or “American Fiction,” it might be extra useful to adapt smaller novels reasonably than ones that gained main literary prizes. Many who see “Conclave” or “The Wild Robotic” gained’t even know the movies are based mostly on books, and that may very well be to their profit.

Potential nominees are listed in alphabetical order; no movie shall be deemed a frontrunner till we now have seen it.

Frontrunners:
Clint Bentley, Greg Kwedar, Clarence “Divine Eye” Maclin, and John “Divine G” Whitfield (“Sing Sing”)
Dave Holstein, Meg LeFauve, and Kelsey Mann (“Inside Out 2”)
Richard Linklater and Glen Powell (“Hit Man”)
Jeff Nichols (“The Bikeriders”)
Jon Spaihts and Denis Villeneuve (“Dune: Half Two”)

Contenders:
Joslyn Barnes and RaMell Ross (“The Nickel Boys”)
Peter Brown and Chris Sanders (“The Wild Robotic”)
Audrey Diwan and Rebecca Zlotowski (“Emanuelle”)
Robert Eggers (“Nosferatu”)
Marielle Heller and Rachel Yoder (“Nightbitch”)
Winnie Holzman (“Depraved”)
Barry Jenkins (“The Fireplace Inside”)
Claire Keegan and Enda Walsh (“Small Issues Like These”)
Justin Kuritzkes (“Queer”)
Nico Lathouris and George Miller (“Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga”)
Todd Phillips and Scott Silver (“Joker: Folie à Deux”)
Eric Roth and Robert Zemeckis (“Right here”)
David Scarpa (“Gladiator II”)
Peter Straughan (“Conclave”)
Malcolm Washington, Virgil Williams, and August Wilson (“The Piano Lesson”)