Our Gold Rush Gang predicts the WGA nominees

Through a haze of champagne, we are going to try to look ahead with our Gold Rush Gang today to Friday, when the Writers Guild of America brings us their nominations. Their myriad of eligibility rules always leads to a lot of screenplays being excluded from nominations (you can find some of this year’s casualties here), giving way to some fare that is less likely to show up at the Oscars. Which always make these nominations somewhat exciting, yet at the same time a bit less useful when it comes to predicting the big one.
Now, our Gold Rush Gang has been hit by the holidays just like the rest of us, so not all of them have been able to get their votes in on time, but even so there is a pretty clear picture looming up for Friday. In fact, Best Adapted Screenplay is all but set as far as we are concerned. There is one lone vote of confidence for Lee Daniels’ The Butler, but the overwhelming feeling is that it will be this set of five: August: Osage County, Before Midnight, Captain Phillips, The Spectacular Now, and The Wolf Of Wall Street. The most likely of these to miss on January 16th is The Spectacular Now, and the general feeling is one more will fall, since 12 Years A Slave and Philomena both look good for a nomination right now. Who looks most shaky, besides Spectacular? Perhaps August: Osage County, which had the difficulty of adapting a popular and acclaimed play for the big screen. Rumblings about a changed ending disappointing some fans of the play might give a hint of the adaptation being under scrutiny.
In the Best Original Screenplay category, we are also looking at a set of six possibilities, with four of them picked by all members: American Hustle, Her, Inside Llewyn Davis, and Nebraska. Opinion is divided over the fifth nominee between Blue Jasmine and Dallas Buyers Club (with a slight favor to the Woody Allen screenplay). This is where the Gold Rush Gang deviates slightly from our forum members as a whole. The latter have much less faith in Dallas than in Jasmine. Is our Gold Rush Gang members more attuned to the rise of the 80’s AIDS drama? We’ll find out in two days. Looking ahead, it doesn’t seem like there will be any other film sneaking in in two weeks time, so your Oscar nominees will come from this pool of six.

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Best Original Screenplay

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Best Adapted Screenplay