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The Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay is the Academy Award for the best screenplay adapted from previously established material. The most frequently adapted media are novels, but other adapted narrative formats include stage plays, musicals, short stories, TV series, and other films and film characters.
- 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
Feb 9, 2020 · But Adam McKay and Charles Randolph did just that and won the Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay. Based on the book The Big Short: Inside the Doomsday Machine, the film is about how a small group of investors managed to profit off the housing financial crisis of 2008.
Mar 11, 2024 · Mike Blake/Reuters. "American Fiction" has won the Academy Award for best adapted screenplay. Writer and director Cord Jefferson took the stage to accept the award. "I just feel so much joy being ...
Mar 7, 2024 · Best Screenplay recognizes excellence specifically in writing – either an Original Screenplay written directly for the screen or an Adapted Screenplay adapted from previously existing source material like a book. A movie can win both Best Picture and a Screenplay award.
Feb 21, 2024 · Ranking the Last 20 Adapted Screenplay Oscar Winners: Part 1. My favorite Academy Award category has some all-timers and very few duds. Jeff O'Neal. Feb 21, 2024. For book lovers, the Best Adapted Screenplay Award is a natural point of entry to the Oscars. Sometimes, there’s a book you love (or more tantalizingly one you hate) among the nominees.
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The Writers Guild of America Award for Best Adapted Screenplay is one of the three screenwriting Writers Guild of America Awards, focused specifically for film.The Writers Guild of America began making the distinction between an original screenplay and an adapted screenplay in 1970, when Waldo Salt, screenwriter for Midnight Cowboy, won for "Best Adapted Drama" and Arnold Schulman won "Best ...
