2025 Oscar Predictions: ADAPTED SCREENPLAY and ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY (November)

With just a few boutique groups with nominations out already, the European Film Academy and British Independent Film Awards, we have only a few notable wins for screenplays in mid-November.

Back in January, Jesse Eisenberg won the Waldo Salt Screenwriting Award at the Sundance Film Festival for his self-directed feature A Real Pain, and at Cannes the screenplay winner was Coralie Fargeat’s The Substance, which set 80s and 90s star on the biggest comeback path of her career.

The Writers Guild of America (WGA) nominations come out much earlier this year after last year’s strike-driven extension, revealing on January 9, 2025, with the usual ineligible films like animated features, non-English language films and anyone not a member of the guild.

Screenplay nominations from Critics Choice will land December 12, with Spirit Award noms a week before that, on December 4. The BAFTA longlists drop on January 3 with nominations on January 15. By then we’ll also have the lion’s share of individual critics’ group having chimed in with their winners in screenplay categories, among others.

Academy Awards nominations will be announced January 17, 2025 and the 97th Oscars will be held on March 2.

Here are my 2025 Oscar predictions in Adapted Screenplay and Original Screenplay for November.

ADAPTED SCREENPLAY

Next up: 

• Gladiator II — David Scarpa, Peter Craig (based on characters by David Franzoni) (Paramount Pictures)
• Hit Man — Richard Linklater, Glen Powell (based on “Hit Man” by Skip Hollandsworth) (Netflix)
• Nosferatu — Robert Eggers (based on “Nosferatu – Eine Symphonie des Grauens” by Wilhelm Murnau and “Dracula” by Bram Stoker) (Focus Features)
• Queer — Justin Kuritzkes (based on the novel by William S. Burroughs) (A24)
• The Wild Robot — Chris Sanders (based on the series by Peter Brown) (Universal Pictures, Dreamworks Animation)

Other contenders: 

• The Bikeriders — Jeff Nichols (based on “The Bikeriders” by Danny Lyon) (Focus Features)
• The Fire Inside — Barry Jenkins (based on “T-Rex” by Zackary Canepari, Drea Cooper) (Amazon MGM)
• Here — Eric Roth, Robert Zemeckis (based on “Here” by Richard McGuire) (Sony Pictures/Tri-Star)
• The Outrun — Amy Liptrot, Nora Fingscheidt, Daisy Lewis (based on the book by Liptrot) (Sony Pictures Classics) – BIFA
• Unstoppable — Eric Champnella, Alex Harris, John Hindman (based on “Unstoppable: From Underdog to Undefeated: How I Became a Champion” by Anthony Robles, Austin Murphy) (Amazon MGM)
• Wicked Part One — Winnie Holzman, Dana Fox (based on the musical stage play with music and lyrics by Stephen Schwartz and the book by Winnie Holzman) (Universal Pictures)

ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY

Next up: 

• Challengers — Justin Kuritzkes (Amazon MGM)
• Dìdi — Sean Wang (Focus Features)
• His Three Daughters — Azazel Jacobs (Netflix) – Gotham
• Kneecap — Rich Peppiatt, Liam Óg Ó Hannaidh, Naoise Ó Cairealláin, JJ Ó Dochartaigh (Sony Pictures Classics) – BIFA
• Saturday Night — Gil Kenan, Jason Reitman (Sony Pictures)

Other contenders: 

• The Apprentice — Gabriel Sherman (Briarcliff Entertainment)
• Better Man — Michael Gracey, Oliver Cole, Simon Gleeson (Paramount Pictures)
• Civil War — Alex Garland (A24)
• A Different Man — Aaron Schimberg (A24)
• I Saw the TV Glow — Jane Schoenbrun (A24)
• Juror #2 — Jonathan A. Abrams (Warner Bros)
• Love Lies Bleeding — Rose Glass, Weronika Tofilska (A24) – BIFA
• Maria — Steven Knight (Netflix)
• Memoir of a Snail — Adam Elliot (IFC Films)
• My Old Ass — Megan Park (Amazon MGM)
• The End — Joshua Oppenheimer, Rasmus Heisterberg (NEON)
• Thelma — Josh Margolin (Magnolia Pictures)
• We Grown Now — Minhal Baig (Sony Pictures Classics)
• Woman of the Hour — Ian MacAllister McDonald (Netflix)

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Erik Anderson

Erik Anderson is the founder/owner and Editor-in-Chief of AwardsWatch and has always loved all things Oscar, having watched the Academy Awards since he was in single digits; making lists, rankings and predictions throughout the show. This led him down the path to obsessing about awards. Much later, he found himself in film school and the film forums of GoldDerby, and then migrated over to the former Oscarwatch (now AwardsDaily), before breaking off to create AwardsWatch in 2013.

He is a Rotten Tomatoes-approved critic, accredited by the Cannes Film Festival, Telluride Film Festival, Toronto International Film Festival and more, is a member of the International Cinephile Society (ICS), The Society of LGBTQ Entertainment Critics (GALECA), Hollywood Critics Association (HCA) and the International Press Academy. Among his many achieved goals with AwardsWatch, he has given a platform to underrepresented writers and critics and supplied them with access to film festivals and the industry and calls the Bay Area his home where he lives with his husband and son.

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