Awards Outlook - Based On The Characters: The Adapted Screenplay Rule
Photo from Entertainment Weekly
Awards analysis is provided by Sean from @MathTeacherMovies.
This past year the Adapted Screenplay category was not very competitive and therefore there were a lot of nominations that may have been deserved but were plenty unconventional. Two of the films that caused a bit of a stir were Top Gun: Maverick and Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery. These two nominations drummed up a lot of controversy not because of the quality of the movies but because they were both considered Adapted Screenplays, when most would consider them not.
The reason these two movies were nominated for Best Adapted Screenplay was because they are sequels and therefore they are based on the characters from the previous film. This is the rule for Adapted Screenplay and had technically been done before, but after this year this rule probably should undergo some re-examination.
The point of Adapted Screenplay is to honor a screenplay that is based on either a previous work whether it be a novel, a short story, a news article, or even a previous film. However, Glass Onion and Maverick are entirely new stories. Maverick takes place almost forty years after the original and only has two previous characters from the first film and Glass Onion is an entirely new setting with entirely new characters with the exception of Daniel Craig’s Benoit Blanc.
These stories came from the minds of the authors of these screenplays and had very little to do with the movies before them. This same problem happened for many other films including Before Sunset and Before Midnight, which are entirely original stories but based on those two previous characters.
However, this isn’t as simple as just getting rid of that particular portion of the rule. Joker was most recently nominated for Best Adapted Screenplay and while the story might have been an original idea it would not be able to exist without the character which was developed in previous publications. Similarly, when The Dark Knight was also considered for the screenplay it was in Best Adapted Screenplay which made sense for the same reasons. Even the last two films of the Before Trilogy would not be anything without the characters and moments from the first film.
This year, Barbie will most likely be a huge Oscar player, especially Greta Gerwig’s screenplay which has already been praised by its actors. It will be interesting to see which screenplay it gets placed in. By the rules of the Academy currently, it should probably be put in Adapted Screenplay, but it seems like it would be an entirely original story so only time will tell where it ends up.
Sequels are fascinating, lying in between Original and Adapted screenplay and in the past the rule has made sense, but after this year's nominations this rule should be more specifically examined but done so carefully.