Academy Award Screenplay Nominations

Posted on January 23, 2007

The Academy Award nominations for the Best Original Screenplay and Best Adapted Screenplay have been announced. Here are the nominees:

Best Adapted Screenplay:

Sacha Baron Cohen and Anthony Hines and Peter Baynham and Dan Mazer and Todd Phillips, Borat

Alfonso Cuaron and Timothy J. Sexton and David Arata and Mark Fergus and Hawk Ostby, Children of Men

William Monahan, The Departed

Todd Field and Tom Perrotta, Little Children

Patrick Marber, Notes on a Scandal

Best Original Screenplay:

Guillermo Arriaga, Babel

Iris Yamashita and Paul Haggis, Letters From Iwo Jima

Michael Arndt, Little Miss Sunshine

Guillermo del Toro, Pan's Labyrinth

Peter Morgan, The Queen

Earlier we discussed the Writer's Guild nominations and said that Borat is an odd selection because much of the script was improvised. We also said we liked Thank You For Smoking and Stranger Than Fiction but unfortunately neither of these films was nominated for an Academy Award.

Peter Morgan, the screenwriter behind The Queen, almost managed to be nominated in both Best Original Screenplay and Best Adapted Screenplay. If The Last King of Scotland, an adaption of Giles Foden's novel, had received a nomination Morgan would have had a chance in both categories. As is stands he still has a good chance of winning -- there is good buzz behind The Queen.