Oscars 2020: Best Adapted Screenplay Predictions
As always, the crowded Adapted Screenplay category ranges over source material from novels and plays to magazine articles. And late-inning eligibility changes can move some originals to adapted, and vice versa.
New Zealand transplant Christine Leunens wrote the award-winning 2004 Vienna-set Hitler Youth novel “Caging Skies,” which was turned into a 2017 New Zealand hit play, and now, Taika Waititi’s black satire “Jojo Rabbit” (Fox Searchlight), which won the Toronto International Film Festival’s People’s Choice award. This light-hearted but serious fable stars Roman Griffin Davis as a lonely young Nazi enthusiast whose imaginary friend Hitler (Waititi) winds up fighting for dominance with a young Jewish girl (Thomasin McKenzie) hidden by his activist mother (Scarlett Johansson) behind a wall in his house.
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Oscar-nominated writer-director Greta Gerwig (“Lady Bird”) adapted “Little Women” (Sony), the Louisa May Alcott classic about a mother (Laura Dern) with limited means raising four daughters while her husband is away at war. Also landing nominations were “Lady Bird” star Saoirse Ronan, who rejoins Gerwig as headstrong writer Jo, while Florence Pugh steals the show as Amy.
Among the scripts adapted from novels are Martin Scorsese’s sprawling gangster saga “The Irishman,” adapted by Oscar-winner Steve Zaillian (“Schindler’s List”) from Charles Brandt’s “I Heard You Paint Houses.” Robert De Niro stars as Sheeran. “The Irishman” marks Zaillian’s fifth Oscar nomination: he also shared a nod (with Jay Cocks and Kenneth Lonergan) for Scorsese’s “Gangs of New York,” and won the Oscar for “Schindler’s List.”
After improbably winning the Golden Lion in Venice, Todd Phillips’ controversial “Joker” wowed audiences but divided critics in Toronto before hitting big at the box office. Written by Phillips (who shared a 2004 writing nomination for “Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan”) and Scott Silver (who shared a writing nomination for “The Fighter”), this DC origin myth profiles a painfully frail clown and aspiring standup comic (Joaquin Phoenix) who desperately seeks attention and eventually gains strength through acts of violence.
Never underestimate Anthony McCarten. He’s the Oscar whisperer: three Oscar-winners based on his scripts — “The Theory of Everything,” “Darkest Hour” and “Bohemian Rhapsody” — have nabbed a total of 16 Oscar nominations. Thus, it should not have been a shock when his latest played well at the fall festivals. “The Two Popes” is a two-hander he created from his unproduced play and pitched to Netflix, starring Jonathan Pryce as Pope Francis and Anthony Hopkins as Pope Benedict. Oscar-nominated Brazilian director Fernando Meirelles (“City of God” and “The Constant Gardener”) creates a riveting sparring match as the two men debate the future of the Catholic Church.
Oscar contenders are listed in alphabetical order below; no movie will be deemed a frontrunner until I have seen it.
Frontrunners:
“Jojo Rabbit”
“Little Women”
Contenders:
“The Irishman”
“Joker”
“The Two Popes”
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