‘Anora’ Isn’t the Only Oscar Contender on an Upswing
Marcus Jones
With a victory for Best Original Screenplay win for “Anora” at the Writers Guild Awards 2025, it certifies the Sean Baker film as the top contender for Best Picture, even if fellow Oscar nominees “The Substance,” “September 5,” and “The Brutalist” were ineligible for the award having not been written by guild members or under a WGA collective bargaining agreement.
“Anora” had already won top prize at the PGA Awards and DGA Awards the previous weekend, with its Critics Choice Award for Best Film being a nice bonus. The only other film to win over those guilds and the WGA yet not win Best Picture is “Brokeback Mountain” in 2006. The major harbinger indicating that the Ang Lee movie would not prevail at the Oscars was “Crash” winning Best Ensemble at the SAG Awards, so a win at that particular awards body in the coming week is crucial to the Neon release’s dominant awards campaign.
All that said, there is another Best Picture nominee that has been on a significant upswing stemming from these guild awards, which are happening concurrently with final Oscar voting. That film is “Nickel Boys.” The Orion Pictures release directed by RaMell Ross won both Best Adapted Screenplay at the WGA Awards and the Michael Apted Award for Outstanding Directorial Achievement in First-Time Theatrical Feature Film at the DGA Awards.
Although Ross is not nominated for Best Director at the Oscars, he is nominated for Best Adapted Screenplay alongside Joslyn Barnes, who is also one of the producers nominated for Best Picture on behalf of the film. The other two are Jeremy Kleiner and Dede Gardner of Plan B Entertainment.
However, it’s more notable in this category that fellow Oscar nominees “Sing Sing,” “Emilia Pérez,” and “Conclave” were ineligible at the WGAs. That’s because “Conclave,” the papal election drama written by Peter Straughan, adapting the Robert Harris novel of the same name, has been the category frontrunner thus far. Straughn won both the Critics Choice Award and the Golden Globe, but has yet to win an award voted on by people in the Academy. But that should change soon, as Straughan is expected to win at the BAFTAs on Sunday.
What could ultimately determine which film wins the Best Adapted Screenplay Oscar isn’t the BAFTAs but the USC Scripter Awards, a prize that’s leaning toward “Nickel Boys.” That awards body is on a hot streak, having predicted the last two Oscar winners, including “American Fiction” and “Women Talking.” Coincidentally, both of those films also happened to be Orion Pictures releases.
“Conclave” though is not to be counted out, even though the WGA Awards have predicted the last four Best Adapted Screenplay winners in a row, as it is an incredibly popular film. But the other statistic that should cause the film some concern is that it has been seven years since the Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay was not awarded to the film’s director. If his reception at the DGA Awards, where all five Best Director nominees stood up to cheer him on, was any indication, Ross and his film “Nickel Boys” have the most momentum as Oscar voting begins to wrap.
