Will Paul Schrader (Taxi Driver) finally take home an Oscar? Read our predictions here.
All this weekend leading up to the 91st Annual Academy Awards looking at each category and diving into who may take home the Oscar. Today we’re looking at the Best Original Screenplay category. We’ll explain what the category means and who the frontrunner is as of now.
Best Original Screenplay
The Best Original Screenplay award is given to the film that is usually a solely original idea. There’s times where the Original Screenplay nominees can include stories about true life events (Vice), but overall the point is that it’s the screenwriter(s) take on this story in a new way. This year the nominees are, The Favourite (Deborah Davis & Tony McNamara), First Reformed (Paul Schrader), Green Book (Brian Currie, Peter Farrelly & Nick Vallelonga), Roma (Alfonso Cuarón), Vice (Adam McKay).
This is a difficult one this year. Many are viewing The Favourite as the frontrunner here, and there’s a damn good chance it stands to win, but no one should count out First Reformed. This is Paul Schrader’s first nomination, and if the name isn’t recognizable, he’s the writer behind Taxi Driver, Raging Bull, and The Last Temptation of Christ. Somehow Schrader has never been nominated before, and many are calling this his best work yet. The film is without a doubt one of the best of 2018, and deserves this nomination, but it will be a hard fight against The Favourite.
The Favourite is nominated in ten categories, and honestly it’s going to be a hard fight for it to even take home one of the awards. But Original Screenplay feels like the most likely win. This is a powerful film, and one that tells a great story about three powerful women. That’s not something that is often celebrated in Hollywood, and it is incredibly long overdue. In the end this is going to come down to whether the Academy decides to award Paul Schrader for as both a “good job here” and pseudo lifetime achievement award, or celebrate the pure greatness of The Favourite.
So as of now here’s the final word:
Best Adapted Screenplay: The Favourite, Deborah Davis & Tony McNamara
