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Billy Wilder, Charles Brackett, Paddy Chayefsky, Francis Ford Coppola, Horton Foote, William Goldman, Robert Benton, Bo Goldman, Waldo Salt, and the Coen brothers have won Oscars for both original and adapted screenplays.
- Overview
- 1920s and 1930s
- 1940s and 1950s
- 1960s and 1970s
- 1980s and 1990s
- 2000s and 2010s
- 2020s
award presented annually by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, located in Beverly Hills, California. It honors outstanding achievement by screenwriters for a screenplay adapted from another work, such as a play or novel, from a given year, as determined by the academy’s voting members.
At the inaugural Academy Awards ceremony, in 1929, the award recognized the work in films released from August 1, 1927, to August 1, 1928. The next four ceremonies honored work in films released from August to July. The 6th ceremony honored work from August to December, and, beginning with the 7th ceremony (1935), only work in movies released the previous calendar year was eligible for consideration.
This award has a complicated history. In the 1st ceremony (1927–28), an award was given for best adaptation. In the 2nd and 3rd ceremonies (1928–30), an award was given for best writing, with no distinction between original work and adaptations. From the 4th (1930–31) to the 7th (1934) ceremonies, an award was again given for best adaptation. Beginning with the 8th ceremony (1935), a screenplay award was given that was the equivalent of the modern award for best adapted screenplay. At the 29th ceremony (1956), the screenplay category was split into best adaptation and best original screenplay. The award had various names before the academy finally settled on best adapted screenplay for the 75th ceremony (2002). The winning screenwriters are given a gold-plated statuette known as an Oscar.
Below is a list of the winning screenwriters and the films for which they won. The years indicate when the eligible films were released.
•1927–28: adaptation: Benjamin Glazer (7th Heaven)
•1928–29: writing: Hans Kraly (The Patriot)
•1929–30: none
•1930–31: adaptation: Howard Estabrook (Cimarron)
•1931–32: adaptation: Edward Burke (Bad Girl)
•1932–33: adaptation: Victor Heerman and Sarah Y. Mason (Little Women)
•1940: screenplay: Donald Ogden Stewart (The Philadelphia Story)
•1941: screenplay: Sidney Buchman and Seton I. Miller (Here Comes Mr. Jordan)
•1942: screenplay: Arthur Wimperis, George Froeschel, James Hilton, and Claudine West (Mrs. Miniver)
•1943: screenplay: Julius J. Epstein, Philip G. Epstein, and Howard Koch (Casablanca)
•1944: screenplay: Frank Butler and Frank Cavett (Going My Way)
•1945: screenplay: Charles Brackett and Billy Wilder (The Lost Weekend)
•1960: Richard Brooks (Elmer Gantry)
•1961: Abby Mann (Judgment at Nuremberg)
•1962: Horton Foote (To Kill a Mockingbird)
•1963: John Osborne (Tom Jones)
•1964: Edward Anhalt (Becket)
•1965: Robert Bolt (Doctor Zhivago)
•1980: Alvin Sargent (Ordinary People)
•1981: Ernest Thompson (On Golden Pond)
•1982: Costa-Gavras and Donald Steward (Missing)
•1983: James L. Brooks (Terms of Endearment)
•1984: Peter Shaffer (Amadeus)
•1985: Kurt Luedtke (Out of Africa)
•2000: Stephen Gaghan (Traffic)
•2001: Akiva Goldsman (A Beautiful Mind)
•2002: Ronald Harwood (The Pianist)
•2003: Fran Walsh, Philippa Boyens, and Peter Jackson (The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King)
•2004: Alexander Payne and Jim Taylor (Sideways)
•2005: Larry McMurtry and Diana Ossana (Brokeback Mountain)
•2020: Christopher Hampton and Florian Zeller (The Father)
•2021: Siân Heder (CODA)
- The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica
Mar 11, 2024 · Cord Jefferson made a plea to Hollywood after winning the Best Adapted Screenplay for American Fiction at the 2024 Academy Awards. The other nominees in the category were Greta Gerwig and Noah...
Feb 9, 2020 · The nail-biting Oscar race for Best Adapted Screenplay came to an end tonight at the 92nd Academy Awards with writer-director Taika Waititi winning the prize for “Jojo Rabbit” over fellow...
- Zack Sharf
“American Fiction” won the Oscar for best adapted screenplay, a triumph for writer-director Cord Jefferson, whose publishing-industry satire marks his first ever feature film.
Shawn Mendes and Tracee Ellis Ross present Sian Heder with the Oscar for Best Adapted Screenplay for 'CODA' at the 94th Oscars.94th Oscars YouTube Playlist ...
- 4 min
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Mar 10, 2024 · American Fiction‘s Cord Jefferson is officially an Oscar winner — and he’s pleading with Hollywood studios to give more up and coming creatives a shot at their own golden statuette.
