Writers Guild (WGA) nominations: ‘CODA,’Nightmare Alley,’ ‘Being the Ricardos,’ ‘Licorice Pizza’ in, Oscar frontrunners ineligible

Erik Anderson January 27, 2022

The Writers Guild of America, comprised of WGA West and WGA East, has revealed the nominations for its WGA Awards celebrating the best screenplays of the year. CODA, Dune and Nightmare Alley are nominated for adapted while Don’t Look Up and Licorice Pizza are among the original screenplay nominees.

Other adapted nominees are West Side Story and tick, tick…BOOM!, with Being the Ricardos, The French Dispatch and King Richard named as original screenplay contenders.

Since the WGA is a signatory guild, you cannot be nominated without being a member as the org created its awards specifically for its members and those who write under its jurisdiction. That’s what gives us wild misses year to year and make the WGA a less relevant Oscar precursor than most of the other guilds.

As a result, a number of top screenplays and frontrunners this year were ineligible, including Cyrano, Passing, The Lost Daughter and Drive My Car in the adapted screenplay category and A Hero, The Hand of God and Parallel Mothers in original screenplay.

Belfast and The Power of the Dog, the top two Best Picture and screenplay Oscar contenders, were also both ineligible.

‘Only Murders in the Building,’ ‘Yellowjackets,’ ‘The Underground Railroad’ among Writers Guild Awards Television nominees

Winners will be announced at the dual ceremony WGA Awards (West Coast and East Coast) on March 20, one week before the Oscars. Here is the full list of nominations.

FILM

ADAPTED SCREENPLAY

CODA, Screenplay by Siân Heder, Based on the Original Motion Picture La Famille Belier Directed by Eric Lartigau, Written by Victoria Bedos, Stanislas Carree de Malberg, Eric Lartigau and Thomas Bidegain; Apple

Dune, Screenplay by Jon Spaihts and Denis Villeneuve and Eric Roth, Based on the novel Dune Written by Frank Herbert; Warner Bros. Pictures

Nightmare Alley, Screenplay by Guillermo del Toro & Kim Morgan, Based on the Novel by William Lindsay Gresham; Searchlight Pictures

tick…tick…BOOM!, Screenplay by Steven Levenson, Based on the play by Jonathan Larson; Netflix

West Side Story, Screenplay by Tony Kushner, Based on the Stage Play, Book by Arthur Laurents, Music by Leonard Bernstein, Lyrics by Stephen Sondheim, Play Conceived, Directed and Choreographed by Jerome Robbins; 20^th Century Studios

ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY

Being the Ricardos, Written by Aaron Sorkin; Amazon Studios

Don’t Look Up, Screenplay by Adam McKay, Story by Adam McKay & David Sirota; Netflix

The French Dispatch of the Liberty, Kansas Evening Sun, Screenplay by Wes Anderson, Story by Wes Anderson & Roman Coppola & Hugo Guinness & Jason Schwartzman; Searchlight Pictures

King Richard, Written by Zach Baylin; Warner Bros. Pictures

Licorice Pizza, Written by Paul Thomas Anderson; United Artists

DOCUMENTARY SCREENPLAY

Being Cousteau, Written by Mark Monroe & Pax Wasserman; National Geographic

Exposing Muybridge, Written by Marc Shaffer; Inside Out Media

Like a Rolling Stone: The Life & Times of Ben Fong-Torres, Written by Suzanne Joe Kai; StudioLA.TV

TELEVISION

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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.