Nominations voting is from January 11-16, 2024, with official Oscar nominations announced January 23, 2024. Final voting is February 22-27, 2024. And finally, the 96th Oscars telecast will be broadcast on Sunday, March 10 and air live on ABC at 8:00 p.m. ET/ 5:00 p.m. PT. We update predictions through awards season, so keep checking IndieWire for all our 2024 Oscar picks.
The State of the Race
At only three days into the new year, there was already a dramatic shift in the Best Original Screenplay race. “Barbie,” the well-reviewed, highest-grossing film of 2023, must now contend for the Best Adapted Screenplay Oscar according to the Academy — even though the Writers Guild of America had deemed it an original work.
Having contenders as formidable as Greta Gerwig and Noah Baumbach, both with three individual Oscar nominations to their name, out of the same category as the newcomers currently leading the pack could be seen as an evening of the playing field. Though past Oscar winners and nominees like Dustin Lance Black (“Rustin”), Emerald Fennell (“Saltburn”), and Wes Anderson (“Asteroid City”) are all vying for Best Original Screenplay this year, the only pair with a major shot of getting in is Bradley Cooper and Josh Singer for “Maestro.”
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But the Netflix movie that’s actually won the most notable awards for its screenplay is “May December,” a script off the 2020 Black List written by Samy Burch and Alex Mechanik. The Todd Haynes-helmed film fits a trend this year of famous writer-directors letting new talent handle screenplay duties. “Air” screenwriter Alex Convery, another Black List alum, has had almost a full year to campaign, and talk about what it was like to have Oscar winners Ben Affleck and Matt Damon peel over his first produced screenplay. Yet the major example is David Hemingson, who made the transition from TV to film with “The Holdovers” with encouragement from Alexander Payne, and now has an even better chance of following in the footsteps of his two-time screenplay Oscar winning collaborator with “Barbie” out of the picture.
However, “Past Lives” scribe Celine Song and “Anatomy of a Fall” screenwriter couple Justine Triet and Arthur Harari are not to be counted out. They had the only two original scripts that were nominated for Best Screenplay at the Golden Globes, in a year where the nominations feel more predictive than ever of what choices Academy voters could make.
Contenders are listed in alphabetical order below.
Frontrunners:
Samy Burch and Alex Mechanik (“May December”)
Bradley Cooper and Josh Singer (“Maestro”)
David Hemingson (“The Holdovers”)
Celine Song (“Past Lives”)
Arthur Harari and Justine Triet (“Anatomy of a Fall”)
Contenders:
Wes Anderson and Roman Coppola (“Asteroid City”)
Dustin Lance Black and Julian Breece (“Rustin”)
Kristoffer Borgli (“Dream Scenario”)
Alex Convery (“Air”)
Chloe Domont (“Fair Play”)
Sean Durkin (“The Iron Claw”)
Emerald Fennell (“Saltburn”)
Hayao Miyazaki (“The Boy and the Heron”)
David Scarpa (“Napoleon”)
Long Shots:
John Carney (“Flora and Son”)
İlker Çatak & Johannes Duncker (“The Teacher’s Lounge”)
Gareth Edwards and Chris Weitz (“The Creator”)
Michel Franco (“Memory”)
John Hoberg, Brenda Hsueh, Kat Likkel, and Peter Sohn (“Elemental”)
Maryam Keshavarz (“The Persian Version”)
A.V. Rockwell (“A Thousand and One”)
Roger Ross Williams and David Teague (“Cassandro”)
Takuma Takasaki and Wim Wenders (“Perfect Days”)
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