At the 2022 Oscars, Sian Heder won Best Adapted Screenplay for “CODA,” her adaptation of the French film “La Famille Bélier.” “CODA” also claimed Best Picture, thereby becoming the fifth remake to win the top Oscar. In 2021 playwright Florian Zeller shared in the Oscar win for Best Adapted Screenplay with Christopher Hampton for bring his stage hit “The Father” to the screen. In his directorial debut Zeller bagged Anthony Hopkins his second Best Actor Oscar. He returns to the race this year with an adaptation of his play “The Son.” (Scroll down for the most up-to-date 2023 Oscars Best Adapted Screenplay predictions.)
Screen versions of stage works had won Best Adapted Screenplay at the Oscars 15 times before. The most recent of these was in 2017 when “Moonlight” director Barry Jenkins and playwright Tarell Alvin McCraney prevailed for adapting the latter’s un-produced play “In Moonlight Black Boys Look Blue.” Prior to that you have to go all the way back to 1989 when Alfred Uhry won for adapting his hit play “Driving Miss Daisy.”
At the 2020 Academy Awards, “Jojo Rabbit” director Taika Waititi won for bringing Christine Leunens novel “Caging Skies” to the big screen. This award, which dates back to the first Oscars in 1928, has gone to the adapters of 47 novels over the year. The most recent of these prior to 2020 was in 2018 when James Ivory won his first Oscar for his adaptation of André Aciman‘s novel “Call Me by Your Name.”
In between those two years, “BlacKkKlansman” director Spike Lee shared in the win for Best Adapted Screenplay for his written work on Ron Stallworth‘s memoir of the same name. In the 93-year history of this category, only a dozen adaptations of such books have prevailed. Five of those non-fiction books adaptations were winners in the last decade: “The Social Network” (2011), “Argo” (2012), “12 Years a Slave” (2013) and “The Imitation Game” (2014) and “The Big Short” (2015).
Short stories provided source material for seven winners, with “Brokeback Mountain” in 2005 being the most recent. One-off sources have included a newspaper column (“Mrs. Miniver”) and a short film (“Sling Blade”).
UPDATED: February 6, 2023
Please note: To read full descriptions of each film, check out our 2023 Oscar Best Picture predictions.
“Women Talking,” Screenplay by Sarah Polley
“Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery,” Written by Rian Johnson
“All Quiet on the Western Front,” Screenplay by Edward Berger, Lesley Paterson & Ian Stokell
“Living,” Written by Kazuo Ishiguro
“Top Gun: Maverick,” Screenplay by Ehren Kruger and Eric Warren Singer and Christopher McQuarrie; Story by Peter Craig and Justin Marks
Make your predictions at Gold Derby now. Download our free and easy app for Apple/iPhone devices or Android (Google Play) to compete against legions of other fans plus our experts and editors for best prediction accuracy scores. See our latest prediction champs. Can you top our esteemed leaderboards next? Always remember to keep your predictions updated because they impact our latest racetrack odds, which terrify Hollywood chiefs and stars. Don’t miss the fun. Speak up and share your huffy opinions in our famous forums where 5,000 showbiz leaders lurk every day to track latest awards buzz. Everybody wants to know: What do you think? Who do you predict and why?
