FINAL 2025 Oscar Predictions: ADAPTED SCREENPLAY and ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY

Erik Anderson February 25, 2025

One of the easiest wins of the night, Conclave comes into the Adapted Screenplay race with every precursor it was eligible for: BAFTA, Critics Choice, Golden Globe and the USC Scripter. Had it been WGA-eligible it would have taken that too. It’s not losing here, and with its SAG cast and BAFTA Best Film wins too, it’s undeniable.

You’d have to go back 20 years, to 2004’s Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, to find an Original Screenplay Oscar winner not nominated for Best Picture and beating a Best Picture nominee (The Aviator). Which is what makes this year’s race all the more complicated. Three different films have won the main original screenplay honors: two Best Picture nominees (Anora and The Substance) and the outsider, A Real Pain, and all written by their directors. When all three have gone head to head, The Substance came out on top with Critics Choice and A Real Pain bested the other two at BAFTA. At WGA, where The Substance was ineligible, Anora beat A Real Pain.

If this category comes early enough in the night, it could be the biggest bellwether for what happens with Best Picture. If Anora wins it’s probably a done deal. If A Real Pain wins, that door is open for Conclave to upset and having its own screenplay award already in hand. Then again, maybe it’s Film Editing that ends up being an early decider…

Here are my final Oscar winner predictions in Adapted Screenplay and Original Screenplay for the the 97th Academy Awards.

ADAPTED SCREENPLAY

1. Conclave (Focus Features) Peter Straughan (based on “Conclave” by Robert Harris)	BAFTA, CCA, GG, USC
2. Nickel Boys (Amazon MGM/Orion) RaMell Ross, Joslyn Barnes (based on “The Nickel Boys” by Colson Whitehead)	BAFTA, CCA, WGA, USC
3. Emilia Pérez (Netflix) Jacques Audiard (based on “Listen” by Boris Razon)	BAFTA, CCA, EFA, GG
4. A Complete Unknown (Searchlight Pictures) Jay Cocks, James Mangold (based on “Dylan Goes Electric!” by Elijah Wald	BAFTA, WGA, USC
5. Sing Sing (A24) Clint Bentley, Greg Kwedar, Clarence Maclin, John “Divine G” Whitfield (based on “The Sing Sing Follies” by John H. Richardson and “Breakin’ the Mummy’s Code” by Brent Buell)	BAFTA, CCA, USC

ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY

1. Anora (NEON) Sean Baker	BAFTA, CCA, GG, WGA
2. A Real Pain (Searchlight Pictures) Jesse Eisenberg	BAFTA, CCA, GG, WGA
3. The Substance (MUBI) Coralie Fargeat	BAFTA, CCA, GG
4. The Brutalist (A24) Brady Corbet, Mona Fastvold	BAFTA, CCA, GG
5. September 5 (Paramount Pictures) Moritz Binder, Tim Fehlbaum	CCA

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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.