2026 Oscar Predictions: ADAPTED SCREENPLAY and ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY (September)

Coming in late with screenplay predictions this season, largely to see if any ‘is it adapted or original’ contenders could get ironed out but there doesn’t really seem to be any that are going to wrinkle the lineup. One Battle After Another, while very far from Thomas Pynchon’s “Vineland,” has an ‘inspired by’ credit in the film and that’s more than enough. Benny Safdie’s The Smashing Machine should be an original screenplay, even as it largely pulls chunks directly from the documentary about UFC wrestler Mark Kerr. It could be a blurry line so I’m going to list it in both for now but outside the top 10.

As it stands right now, I think there are two top contenders in each category, and the only two I can realistically see winning, in each. In Adapted it’s One Battle vs Hamnet, arguably the top two films of the year in the Best Picture race as well. Hamnet’s seemingly unadaptable prose has proven a success with director Chloé Zhao and the novel’s author Maggie O’Farrell breathing cinematic life into the dense story of Agnes and William Shakespeare, and Paul Thomas Anderson breaks so far off “Vineland” as to create what’s nearly an entirely new property. But we also have no less than four Netflix films angling for a spot (and they’re very good at getting noms here) with Wake Up Dead Man, the third Knives Out film from Rian Johnson, Train Dreams from the creators of last year’s Oscar-nominated Sing Sing, Guillermo del Toro’s Frankenstein and Richard Linklater’s Nouvelle Vague.

In Original, it’s Sentimental Value vs Sinners, with the former being a Cannes winner from a previous Oscar nominee in this category and the writer/director behind this year’s early frontrunner and box office beast. Both films are also embedded in the top 5 of Best Picture contenders so it’s an embarrassment of riches for voters. That doesn’t mean it’s not a competitive category, at least for nominations, especially with previous nominee Noah Baumbach with Jay Kelly, Jafar Panahi with his Cannes Palme d’Or winner It Was Just an Accident and Zach Cregger with his sleeper horror hit Weapons. But don’t count out the other Safdie, brother Josh will have Marty Supreme this Christmas. One curious unknown is if the WGA expulsion of Park Chan-wook earlier this summer over continuing to write during the 2023 writers strike will impact his ability to be nominated here for No Other Choice. I’m including it in the lineup, and high, but it’s something to keep an eye on and ear to the ground for.

Here are my 2026 Oscar nomination predictions in Adapted Screenplay and Original Screenplay for September.

ADAPTED SCREENPLAY

Other contenders: Die My Love (MUBI), Hedda (Amazon MGM), The History of Sound (MUBI), Kiss of the Spider Woman (Roadside Attractions), The Life of Chuck (NEON), Nuremberg (Sony Pictures Classics)

Adapted or Original?: The Smashing Machine (A24)

ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY

Other contenders: Blue Moon (Sony Pictures Classics), If I Had Legs I’d Kick You (A24), The Mastermind (MUBI), A Private Life (Sony Pictures Classics), The Smashing Machine (A24), Sorry, Baby (A24), The Testament of Ann Lee (TBD), The Voice of Hind Rajab (TBD)

Adapted or Original?: The Smashing Machine (A24)

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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), Critics Choice Association (CCA), San Francisco Bay Area Film Critics Circle (SFBAFCC) 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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