In one of the odder twists of this awards season, the script that Ava DuVernay wrote for her film Origin has been deemed an adapted screenplay by the executive committee of the Academy’s writers branch, The Hollywood Reporter has learned, despite being classified as an original screenplay by the Writers Guild of America.

The moving drama, which premiered to acclaim at the Venice and Toronto international film festivals, was inspired by Isabel Wilkerson’s 2020 best-selling book Caste: The Origins of Our Discontent. Wilkerson, a Pulitzer Prize winner for her 2010 book The Warmth of Other Suns, is not featured at all in Caste, but is the beating heart and soul of Origin, as portrayed by Oscar nominee Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor (King Richard). The book is prejudice across vast swaths of history and geography, but the film, meanwhile, chronicles Wilkerson’s path to arriving at those connections.

Origin’s script will now be competing for an Oscar nomination against the likes of Barbie (Noah Baumbach and Greta Gerwig) — which, Variety was the first to report earlier Wednesday, was also moved to this category by the executive committee of the writers branch, while remaining as an original for the WGA Awards — plus Oppenheimer (Christopher Nolan), Poor Things (Tony McNamara), Killers of the Flower Moon (Eric Roth and Martin Scorsese), American Fiction (Cord Jefferson), The Zone of Interest (Jonathan Glazer) and Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse (Dave Callaham, Phil Lord and Chris Miller).

Its competition for a WGA Award nom, meanwhile, will include Barbie, Past Lives (Celine Song), The Holdovers (David Hemingson), Maestro (Bradley Cooper and Josh Singer), May December (Samy Burch and Alex Mechanik), Saltburn (Emerald Fennell), Air (Alex Convery) and Rustin (Dustin Lance Black and Julian Breece).

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