The BAFTA nominations are in less than 24 hours and the Oscar nominations are in less than a week, but there are still other adjacent awards season nominations to unveil. This morning, The USC Libraries revealed the honorees for the 2024 USC Scripter Awards rewarding the best in adapted screenplays for television and film. And, intriguingly, there were a few surprises.
READ MORE: “Poor Things,” “The Last of Us” and “The Bear” earn 2024 PGA Awards nominations
Cord Jefferson’s script for “American Fiction,” Tony McNamara’s screenplay for “Poor Things,” Eric Roth and Martin Scorsese’s adaptation of “Killers of the Flower Moon” and Christopher Nolan’s “Oppenheimer” were expected in the film category. What wasn’t expected was Ava DuVernay’s adaptation of Isabel Wilkerson’s “Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents” for “Origin.”
DuVernay’s epic has been trying to gain a foothold in the Oscars race and Adapted Screenplay is one category it might be able to crack. In this case, it overcame several screenplays expected to make the Oscar category from Jonathan Glazer (“The Zone of Interest”), Andrew Haigh (“All of Us Strangers”), and Kelly Freemon Craig (“Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret”).
There were far few snubs on the television side as adapted screenplays for “The Crown,” “Daisy Jones & The Six,” “The Last of Us,” “Slow Horses,” and “Winning Time: The Rise of the Lakers Dynasty” were recognized.
The winners of the 2024 USC Scripter Awards will be announced during a dinner on the USC Campus on March 2.
This year’s nominees are as follows:
FILM
Cord Jefferson for American Fiction
Based on the novel Erasure by Percival Everett
Amazon MGM Studios / Graywolf Press
Eric Roth and Martin Scorsese for Killers of the Flower Moon
Based on the nonfiction book Killers of the Flower Moon: The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI by David Grann
Apple Original Films / Vintage Books
Christopher Nolan for Oppenheimer
Based on the nonfiction book American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer by Kai Bird and Martin J. Sherwin
Universal Pictures / Vintage Books
Ava DuVernay for Origin
Based on the nonfiction book Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents by Isabel Wilkerson
Neon / Random House
Tony McNamara and novelist Alasdair Gray for Poor Things
Searchlight Pictures / Bloomsbury
EPISODIC SERIES
Peter Morgan, for the episode “Sleep, Dearie Sleep” from The Crown
Based on his stage play The Audience
Netflix / Dramatists Play Service Inc.
Scott Neustadter for the episode “Fire,” from Daisy Jones & The Six
Based on the novel by Taylor Jenkins Reid
Prime Video / Random House
Craig Mazin and Neil Druckmann for the episode “Long, Long Time” from The Last of Us
Based on the video game by Neil Druckmann and Naughty Dog
HBO | Max / Sony Computer Entertainment
Will Smith for the episode “Negotiating with Tigers” from Slow Horses
Based on the novel Real Tigers by Mick Herron
Apple TV+ / Soho Crime
Max Borenstein, Rodney Barnes and Jim Hecht for the episode “The New World,” from Winning Time: The Rise of the Lakers Dynasty
Based on the nonfiction work Showtime: Magic, Kareem, Riley, and the Los Angeles Lakers Dynasty of the 1980s by Jeff Pearlman
HBO | Max / Avery