2025 Oscars: Best Original Screenplay Predictions

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

Breaking down the chances a movie will get a Finest Unique Screenplay nomination, the very first thing to notice is that the Oscar often goes to a movie written or co-written by the director. The final movie to win this class with out the director having a writing credit score is “The King’s Speech” over a decade in the past. If one had been to guess why that is, a superb reply can be that with Finest Image increasing to 10 classes, the door opened to voters being invested in much more filmmakers’ successes, leading to many deciding to vote one individual for Finest Director and a special individual for every screenplay Oscar. That concept of spreading the wealth can be how winners have turn out to be more and more various. For each Finest Unique Screenplay and Finest Tailored Screenplay, nearly all of the winners from the final 5 years are a lady or individual of colour.

The explanation to deliver this all up is that one of many larger tales about this awards season is that there are virtually no girls administrators with a combating probability of a Finest Director nomination. The closest could also be “All We Think about as Mild” director Payal Kapadia, given how the movie received the Grand Prix at Cannes over different award season contenders like “Emilia Pérez” and “The Seed of the Sacred Fig,” however that movie’s awards probabilities took an actual hit by not being submitted by India for Finest Worldwide Characteristic.

With the screenplay classes being break up, reducing down on the variety of acclaimed administrators from this 12 months they could be competing in opposition to, Finest Unique Screenplay now seems just like the class the place a feminine director has the most effective shot at being nominated. Coralie Fargeat is one other instance, together with her movie “The Substance” truly successful the Finest Screenplay award at Cannes — however the gleefully ugly physique horror is protecting some voters from even giving the movie an opportunity, so she might have simply as onerous a time.

What both Kapadia or Fargeat or any feminine director would wish to obtain extra awards recognition can be for his or her movie to really feel like a lock for a nomination in a much bigger class. Enter “Babygirl,” which earned star Nicole Kidman the Volpi Cup for Finest Actress at Venice this 12 months. That award has more and more been predictive of the Finest Actress race, with 4 of the final 5 winners receiving an Oscar nomination. Given Kidman’s stature, this 12 months’s movie panorama, and the response “Babygirl” has been receiving, it’s onerous to not see the Australian performer as a frontrunner in that class, which means voters will certainly watch the erotic thriller to type their very own opinions on it. 

And by watching Kidman’s daring efficiency, they are going to be soaking in director Halina Reijn’s partaking screenplay that already has generated memorable moments simply primarily based on the movie’s trailer alone. This may in all probability not be the case if the movie didn’t have a lot business enchantment, however there actually is a pathway for Reijn to probably be the only feminine filmmaker illustration among the many above the road classes.

That mentioned, simply because a person wrote it doesn’t imply loads of girls inside the Academy received’t champion Sean Baker’s Palme d’Or winner “Anora,” or the critically acclaimed “Arduous Truths” from beloved British filmmaker Mike Leigh. Each movies even have lead performances which are closely within the operating for Finest Actress. It’s also value noting that regardless of “The Brutalist” garnering a little bit of a (in all probability unwarranted) movie bro-y fame akin to “Oppenheimer,” the A24 launch is co-written by director Brady Corbet’s partner Mona Fastvold, who additionally co-wrote his different two options, so there’ll very probably be a least one girl nominated on this class.

Final however not least is “A Actual Ache” from Oscar-nominated actor Jesse Eisenberg, which is discovering a second wind after it premiered at Sundance and received the Waldo Salt Screenwriting Award. Once more, it being one of many frontrunners for Finest Supporting Actor for star Kieran Culkin is an indicator it is going to be seen by sufficient voters to safe a nomination right here.

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

Frontrunners:
Sean Baker (“Anora”)
Brady Corbet and Mona Fastvold (“The Brutalist”)
Jesse Eisenberg (“A Actual Ache”)
Mike Leigh (“Arduous Truths”)
Halina Reijn (“Babygirl”)

Contenders:
Moritz Binder, Alex David, and Tim Fehlbaum (“September 5”)
Coralie Fargeat (“The Substance”)
Azazel Jacobs (“His Three Daughters”)
Payal Kapadia (“All We Think about as Mild”)
Steven Knight (“Maria”)
Gil Kenan and Jason Reitman (“Saturday Night time”)
Justin Kuritzkes (“Challengers”)
Josh Margolin (“Thelma”)
Steve McQueen (“Blitz”)
Mohammad Rasoulof (“The Seed of the Sacred Fig”)

Lengthy Pictures:
Jonathan A. Abrams (“Juror #2”)
Andrea Arnold (“Hen”)
Efthimis Filippou and Yorgos Lanthimos (“Sorts of Kindness”)
Alex Garland (“Civil Warfare”)
Rasmus Heisterberg and Joshua Oppenheimer (“The Finish”)
Nick Payne (“We Stay in Time”)
Aaron Schimberg (“A Totally different Man”)
Jane Schoenbrun (“I Noticed the TV Glow”)
Gabriel Sherman (“The Apprentice”)
Sean Wang (“Dìdi”)