Oscar Countdown: Adapted and Original Screenplay
Will the Adapted winner give his acceptance speech while walking? Will the Original winner even show up?
In advance of the Academy Award ceremony on Feb. 26, Screen Grab will predict the winners in all categories.
Adapted Screenplay: Alexander Payne, Nat Faxon and Jim Rash, The Descendants; John Logan, Hugo; George Clooney, Grant Heslov and Beau Willimon, The Ides of March; Steven Zaillian, Aaron Sorkin and Stan Chervin, Moneyball; Bridget O’Connor and Peter Straughan, Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy. Hugo might be the most-nominated film, but I doubt many Academy voters will find its script to be its strength. George Clooney shares the writing nomination for The Ides of March, but that film is pretty much completely overshadowed by The Descendants, which also stars Clooney. Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy and Moneyball both deserve props for compressing such complicated source material, although Tinker left a lot of audiences puzzled.
Prediction: Moneyball. As a film that finds drama in a real-life, occasionally geeky subject, the adaptation of Michael Lewis’ book is this year’s equivalent to The Social Network, which won co-scripter Aaron Sorkin an Oscar last year. To apply Moneyball’s own metric to the Oscars, however, I think The Descendants is undervalued in many categories and could stage several upsets.