Writer-director Cord Jefferson won Best Adapted Screenplay at the 2024 Oscars for turning Percival Everett‘s novel “Erasure” into the critically acclaimed film “American Fiction.” That marked the fourth time in a decade that a film based on a novel won this award. The others: “Women Talking” (Sarah Polley), “Jojo Rabbit” (Taika Waititi), and “Call Me By Your Name” (James Ivory). This is the most common form of adaptation to win. Indeed this award, which dates back to the first Oscars in 1928, has gone to the adapters of 48 novels over the year. (Scroll down for the most up-to-date 2025 Oscar predictions for Best Adapted Screenplay.)
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.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.”
In 2021, “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 96-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”).
A whopping 10 writers have won this race twice each: Robert Bolt (“Doctor Zhivago,” “A Man for All Seasons”), Christopher Hampton (“Dangerous Liaisons,” “The Father”), Ruth Prawer Jhabvala (“A Room With a View,” “Howards End”), Joseph L. Mankiewicz (“A Lette to Three Wives,” “All About Eve”), Alexander Payne (“Sideways,” “The Descendants”), Alvin Sargent (“Julia,” “Ordinary People”), George Seaton (“Miracle on 34th Street,” “The Country Girl”), Michael Wilson (“A Place in the Sun,” “The Bridge on the River Kwai”), and Francis Ford Coppola and Mario Puzo ( both for “The Godfather,” “The Godfather Part II”). Billy Wilder holds the record for most nominations in this category with seven bids to his name.
Please note: To read full descriptions of each film, check out our 2025 Oscars Best Picture predictions.
UPDATED: July 12, 2024
LEADING CONTENDERS
“Conclave” — Peter Straughan (Focus Features)
“Dune: Part Two” — Denis Villeneuve and Jon Spaihts (Warner Bros.)
“Gladiator II” — David Scarpa (Paramount Pictures)
“Hitman” — Richard Linklater and Glen Powell (Netflix)
“Nickel Boys” — RaMell Ross and Joslyn Barnes (Amazon MGM Studios)
“Nightbitch — Marielle Heller (Searchlight)
“The Piano Lesson” — Malcolm Washington and Virgil Williams (Netflix)
“Sing Sing — Greg Kwedar, Clint Bentley, Clarence “Divine Eye” Maclin, and John “Divine G” Whitfield (A24)
“Wicked” — Winnie Holzman (Universal)
STRONG CONTENDERS
“The Fire Inside” — Barry Jenkins (Amazon MGM Studios)
“Hedda” — Nia DaCosta (Amazon MGM Studios)
“Here” — Robert Zemeckis and Eric Roth (Sony Pictures)
“Inside Out 2” — Kelsey Mann, Meg LeFauve, and Dave Holstein (Disney)
“Joker: Folie à Deux” — Todd Phillips and Scott Silver (Warner Bros.)
“Lee” — Liz Hannah, John Collee, Marion Hume, and Lem Dobbs (Sky Cinema/Studio Canal)
“Nosferatu” — Robert Eggers (Focus Features/Universal)
“The Wild Robot” — Chris Sanders (Universal)
POSSIBLE CONTENDERS
“The Bikeriders” — Jeff Nichols (Focus Features/Universal)
“Emmanuelle” — Audrey Diwan and Rebecca Zlotowski (Pathé)
“Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga” — George Miller and Nico Lathouris
“The Idea of You” — Michael Showalter and Jennifer Westfeldt (Amazon Prime Video)
“Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes” — Josh Friedman (20th Century Studios)
“One Life” — Lucinda Coxon and Nick Drake (Bleecker Street/Warner Bros.)
“Small Things Like These” — Enda Walsh (Lionsgate)
“Wildcat” — Ethan Hawke and Shelby Gaines (Oscilloscope Laboratories)
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