The WGA Awards were handed out tonight.
Eighth Grade won for Original Screenplay and Can You Ever Forgive Me? won for Adapted Screenplay.
Both of those are surprising results. Eighth Grade isn’t even nominated for the Oscar, so that’s part of that one. The other part — The Favourite wasn’t eligible for WGA. And the Original Screenplay category was long considered The Favourite vs. Green Book. So now you have a situation where Green Book was in the guild without having to face The Favourite, and it still lost. That’s fascinating. And since Roma didn’t win, that means that doesn’t get a boost into “could win” territory. So now we’re back to The Favourite vs. Green Book. You can’t call it just yet because if Green Book is gonna win Best Picture, it almost certainly is gonna take Screenplay too. But man, does this make you look even more sideways at Green Book’s chances here.
And then for Adapted — Can You Ever Forgive Me? opens up the Adapted race to three films instead of two. I thought it would be either Beale Street or BlacKkKlansman, which split BFCA and BAFTA. I figured this would be the tiebreaker. Now we just have another hat in the ring. Though what’s even more interesting about the whole affair — all three of them lost the USC Scripter to Leave No Trace, which isn’t nominated for the Oscar. So now we have three scripts which won one precursor each, and no real idea how the Academy’s gonna vote for the category.
Oh well. That’s the fun of Oscar season, I guess. MPSE is announcing tonight, so those results will go up when I have them. CDG announces Tuesday and then that’ll be it for the precursors. Then I’ve got four category breakdowns left — both Screenplay categories, Sound Editing, which will go up tomorrow, and Best Picture, which will go up last. Then Friday come the Five Word Film Reviews (which are DONE already! Most years I’m rushing to write up like 300 reviews in less than a week. I did that shit already!). Saturday we do our usual Favorite Moments in the Best Picture nominees and prepare ourselves for Sunday. P.S. I’m already 43,000 words into my giant Oscar article. I’m on top of this shit this year. I am ready.
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