The WGA and Scripter Preview

The Writers Guild will announce their nominees this Thursday, along with the USC Scripter awards.

The screenplay categories are a lynchpin to see which handful of films the guilds will begin to support.  While the WGA isn’t really a make or break, particularly since there are always those screenplays that don’t qualify for them, it can help in terms of sussing out what films can WIN. Unless your script is not eligible, like the The King’s Speech, failure to earn a WGA nomination is not a good thing.   Even Avatar got a WGA nod the year it was up for the award. That it then didn’t get a screenplay nod from AMPAS was a clear indicator that it could not win Best Picture.  Your Best Picture winner, in truth, needs support from the writers, the directors and the actors primarily.  From there, the below the line support can help a lot.  But a movie like The King’s Speech, with a whopping 12 nominations, could lose everything else and still win Screenplay, Director, Actor and Picture.

Nonetheless, judging how the WGA goes on Thursday we should find out whether some projects will lay or play.  I will be particularly watching for Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, War Horse, The Help (where Tate Taylor might get his first guild nod), Tree of Life, Bridesmaids, and Drive.  I’m assuming The Artist won’t be eligible, but we’ll have to wait and see.

I do expect nominations for most, if not all of those films.  The easy bets are Moneyball, The Descendants, and Hugo.

I do feel that original screenplay at the WGAs is wide open.  The general thinking is that it will go:
The Artist (if eligible)
Woody Allen, Midnight in Paris
Bridesmaids
Will Reiser, 50/50
Tree of Life

A longer shot here would be Tom McCarthy for Win/Win, Diablo Cody for Young Adult, Oren Moverman and James Ellroy for Rampart,  I will guess that Asghar Farhadi won’t be eligible to be nominated for A Separation.

My hope is that JC Chandor will be recognized for his marvelously dense Margin Call, or Abi Morgan and Steve McQueen might get something for Shame.  Finally, Scott Z Burns deserves a lot more credit for Contagion.  Appreciation for that script might show up there.

Adapted Screenplay will probably go:
Alexander Payne, Nat Faxton, Jim Rash,The Descendants
Aaron Sorkin, Steven Zaillian, Stan Chervin, Moneyball
Lee Hall, Richard Curtis, War Horse
John Logan, Hugo
Tate Taylor, The Help

I am also not counting out Steve Zaillion’s adaptation of the Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, Clooney, Heslov and Willimon for Ides of March, and Bridget O’Connor, Peter Straughn, Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy. I’m also wondering about Eric Roth for Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close. Yes, the film was harshly reviewed by the critics but Roth is so esteemed in the community I am not entirely sure it’s out.

The USC Scripter honors both the book and the script and here is where I think Extremely Loud could pop up.  But with all of the adapted screenplay predictions you see above, they could just as easily get in with the Scripters too, as all of those are beloved books.

Naturally, last year The Social Network won the Script and the WGA and everything else.  But the year before it was Jason Reitman for Up in the Air — the book and the screenplay won.  Prior to that it was an easy call with Slumdog Millionaire and before that, No Country for Old Men.

Unfortunately, what is glaringly missing here is Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part 2. A nomination at the WGAs or the Scripters might help to foist that film into the race in a significant way. But I am not confident that it will get in here if it didn’t get into the PGAs.

Either which way, we wait, we wait.  We’ll put out more formal predictions some time tomorrow

The charts:

won WGA | won Oscar *nominated for Best Picture +won Best Picture

WINNERS CHART +Won Best Picture *nominated for Best Pic WGA | OSCAR