“Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio,” “Living,” “She Said,” “Top Gun: Maverick,” and “Women Talking” are among the films nominated for this year’s USC Libraries Scripter Awards. Additionally, TV episodes of “The Crown”, “Fleishman Is in Trouble”, “Slow Horses”, “Tokyo Vice”, and “Under the Banner of Heaven” were also recognized.
A strong pointer to the Best Adapted Screenplay category of the Oscars, previous Scripter winners who have tied the Academy over the past decade include ‘Argo’ (2012), ’12 Years a Slave’ (2013), ‘The Imitation Game” (2014), “The Big Short” (2015), “Moonlight” (2016), “Call Me by Your Name” (2017) and “Nomadland” (2020). Spike Lee’s “BlacKkKlansman” (2019) is the only screenwriter-eligible film to have won the Oscar without being nominated by the organization.
The inclusion of “Pinocchio” is particularly noteworthy, as it has gained momentum over the past few weeks. He’s a dark horse for one of the five coveted adapted story spots, which could point to a possible surprise nod for best picture (if voters come to his aid). The popularity of “Top Gun: Maverick” continues to show with its addition of other notable scribes.
Among the omissions on the film side are Noah Baumbach’s ambitious adaptation of Netflix’s Don DeLillo novel “White Noise” and Samuel D. Hunter’s self-adaptation of his A24 play “The Whale.”
Note: Rian Johnson’s “Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery” was not eligible for the Scripter because it is based on characters from the first “Knives Out” movie (2019) and not a work of literature.
On television, FX led the pack with two names for “Fleishman Is in Trouble” with Claire Danes and “Under the Banner of Heaven” with Andrew Garfield. The former will compete for next year’s Emmy Awards, boosting its prospects significantly as TV awards season approaches.
The Scripter 2023 Selection Committee chose among the finalists from 101 films and 67 television adaptations. Notable names on the selection committee include film critics Leonard Maltin, IndieWire’s Anne Thompson, and screenwriters Eric Roth and Erin Cressida Wilson.
USC Libraries will announce the winning authors and screenwriters at a black-tie ceremony on Saturday, March 4, 2023 at the historic Edward L. Doheny Jr. Memorial Library at the University of Southern California.
The full list of nominees is below.
Nominated films
- “The Pinocchio of Guillermo del Toro” (Netflix) – Guillermo del Toro, Patrick McHale and Matthew Robbins (based on the fairy tale “The Adventures of Pinocchio” by Carlo Collodi)
- “Living” (Sony Pictures Classics) – Kazuo Ishiguro (based on the short story “The Death of Ivan Ilyich” by Leo Tolstoy)
- “She Said” (Universal Pictures) – Rebecca Lenkiewicz (based on the non-fiction book, “She Said: Breaking the Sexual Harassment Story That Helped Ignite a Movement” by Jodi Kantor and Megan Twohey)
- “Top Gun: Maverick” (Paramount Pictures) – Peter Craig, Ehren Kruger, Justin Marks, Christopher McQuarrie and Eric Warren (based on characters from the 1983 “California” magazine article “Top Guns” by Ehud Yonay)
- “Women Talking” (MGM/United Artists Releasing) — Sarah Polley, Miriam Toews (based on the novel “Women Talking” by Miriam Toews)
TV nominees
- Peter Morgan, for episode “Couple 31” of “The Crown” (Netflix) – based on his play “The Audience”
- Taffy Brodesser-Akner for “The Liver” episode of “Fleishman Is in Trouble” (FX) – based on her book of the same name
- Will Smith for the episode “Failure’s Contagious” of “Slow Horses” (Apple TV+) — based on the novel by Mick Herron
- JT Rogers for “Yoshino” episode of “Tokyo Vice” (HBO Max) – based on Jake Adelstein’s memoir “Tokyo Vice: An American Reporter on the Police Beat in Japan”
- Dustin Lance Black for “Under the Banner of Heaven” episode “When God Was Love” (FX) – based on the non-fiction work of Jon Krakauer
See the latest movie predictions, across all 23 categories, in one place on Variety Oscar Collective.