Oscars 2024: Barbie Moves to Adapted, Shifting the Original Screenplay Category

Clayton Davis got the scoop that the Academy has moved the Barbie screenplay to adapted from original.

The film was designated an original work by the Writers Guild of America. That classification will stick for the upcoming WGA Awards. However, each awards body and voting group has its own subset of rules for movies regarding which screenplay category they can submit or ultimately be nominated. Due to the Hollywood strikes, the precursors are not as crucial in years past after shifting the ceremony to April following the Oscars ceremony.

Barbie is based on a famous toy, along with Ken and most of the characters, so it’s somewhat out of bounds to see it as an adapted work. They didn’t come up with the idea of Barbie dolls — they existed already. But it could have gone either way.

We’ve seen this switch before, with Moonlight but also in 2014 when Whiplash was unexpectedly put into adapted at the Oscars, knocking out Gone Girl.

In this case, Barbie exiting Original Screenplay likely puts The Holdovers vs. Past Lives up against each other, with the critics’ favorite May December also in the hunt. Both May December and Past Lives are written by women, which might have an impact, with Past Lives being written by a woman of color, Celine Song.

Anatomy of a Fall might also end up in the category, splitting the “I want to only vote for a woman” vote three ways, and then if you add Saltburn, it could be a female-dominated category with only The Holdovers (by far the best of the bunch) holding the line for the men. Bradley Cooper and Josh Singer could also slip in for Maestro now that there’s an open slot.

This is how I see Original Screenplay shaping up:

The Holdovers, David Hemingson
Past Lives, Celine Song
May December, Samy Burch
Anatomy of a Fall, Justine Triet
Maestro, Bradley Cooper and Josh Singer

Next in line:
Rustin, Julian Breece and Dustin Lance Black
Saltburn, Emerald Fennell
Blackberry, Matt Johnson and Matthew Miller
Air, Alex Convery

Moving on to Adapted Screenplay, I think Barbie entering this race almost guarantees it won’t win (never say never) as it’s going up against heavy hitters like American Fiction, Oppenheimer, and Killers of the Flower Moon. I personally can see Barbie and Poor Things splitting the vote, handing the win to a different movie. We’ll have to see how much they love all of these films and how they choose to split up the vote. Here is how I see it playing out at the moment:

American Fiction, Cord Jefferson
Oppenheimer, Christopher Nolan
Poor Things, Tony McNamara
Killers of the Flower Moon, Eric Roth and Martin Scorsese
Barbie, Greta Gerwig and Noah Baumbach

Next in line:

Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret, Kelly Fremon Craig
All of Us Strangers, Andrew Haigh
The Killer, Andrew Kevin Walker
The Zone of Interest, Jonathan Glazer
Origin, Ava DuVernay
The Taste of Things, Tran Anh Hung
Nyad, Julia Cox
Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse, Phil Lord and Dave Callaham

One thing to watch for with Adapted is the USC Scripter award, which theoretically honors both the novel and the screenplay. This year will be quite a doozy with these screenplays (with Barbie the notable exception) being based on beloved books. Both Killers of the Flower Moon and American Prometheus are truly two of the best nonfiction books every written. I’d probably lean toward Oppenheimer on that one as I believe Nolan did an expert job adapting that book, which is so dense and intricate. Killers of the Flower Moon more or less obliterated the source material to create something almost entirely new. But it works.

Does this move open the door for other films to maybe crash the Adapted party, like All of Us Strangers or The Killer, knocking out Barbie? Probably not, given the clout of Greta Gerwig and Noah Baumbach, but you never know. Gone Girl was nominated for nearly every award heading in to the Oscars but was dropped off to make way for Whiplash. So you never know how these things can go.

Mark Johnson says: