FINAL 2021 Oscar Predictions: ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY

With wins from BAFTA, Critics Choice and WGA there’s very little that is going to get in the way of Emerald Fennell winning the Original Screenplay Oscar for Promising Young Woman.

Emerald Fennell has bested Aaron Sorkin’s The Trial of the Chicago 7 at three of their four matchups and it’s fair to say that the Golden Globe win for Sorkin spoke more to how much they like him (he won for Steve Jobs, which was Oscar-snubbed even for a nomination). It’s still probably a solid second and if we’re going to see a Best Picture upset in the works it would be here. The only recent precedent for Promising Young Woman to lose at this point would be 2009’s Up in the Air winning everything then losing the Oscar to Precious but behind the scenes drama with the former might have led to that loss and we don’t have anything like that here.

The last and only time women won both of the screenplay Oscars was 2003 when Sofia Coppola won original for Lost in Translation and Fran Walsh & Philippa Boyens won adapted for Lord of the Rings: Return of the King. While Coppola’s was a sole win, Walsh and Boyens’ win was shared with director Peter Jackson. This year, if Fennell wins here and Chloé Zhao wins in adapted it will mark the first time in Oscar history that women will have both screenplay wins without a male co-writer.

The 93rd Oscars will be held on April 25 at the Dolby Theatre in Hollywood and the Union Station in Los Angeles.

Here are my ranked final Oscar predictions in Original Screenplay.

1. Promising Young Woman (Focus Features) – BAFTA, BFCA, GG, WGA
Written by Emerald Fennell

2. The Trial of the Chicago 7 (Netflix) – BAFTA, BFCA , GG, WGA
Written by Aaron Sorkin

3. Minari (A24) – BFCA (WGA ineligible)
Written by Lee Isaac Chung

4. Sound of Metal (Amazon Studios) – BFCA, WGA
Screenplay by Darius Marder & Abraham Marder; Story by Darius Marder & Derek Cianfrance

5. Judas and the Black Messiah (Warner Bros) – WGA
Screenplay by Will Berson & Shaka King; Story by Will Berson & Shaka King and Kenny Lucas & Keith Lucas

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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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