Going into this year’s Oscars, Jane Campion is currently expected to win Best Adapted Screenplay for “The Power of the Dog” with 7/2 odds according to Gold Derby’s combined predictions as of this writing. However, she recently ended up losing that award at BAFTA to Siân Heder for “CODA” in quite an upset. Last year, “The Father” managed to beat the eventual Best Picture winner, “Nomadland,” for Best Adapted Screenplay at BAFTA before going on to repeat at the Oscars. Could “CODA” be on a similar trajectory?
“CODA” follows Ruby Rossi (Emilia Jones), a child of deaf adults, otherwise known as a CODA, as she is the only hearing person in her family. Her parents, Frank (Troy Kotsur) and Jackie (Marlee Matlin), as well as her older brother, Leo (Daniel Durant), are all deaf. Ruby works alongside Frank and Leo in their fishing business. Though when she discovers a passion for singing, she starts to become torn between pursuing her dreams and her family obligations.
Before last year’s Oscar nominations were announced, “Nomadland” was predicted to win Best Adapted Screenplay along with Best Picture and Best Director. Though after “The Father” exceeded our expectations by receiving six Oscar bids overall (including Best Picture), the race was on. WGA wasn’t helpful as both films were ineligible for nominations there, so “Borat Subsequent Moviefilm” won in both of their absences.
The only major industry award for Best Adapted Screenplay where “The Father” and “Nomadland” went head to head was BAFTA, where the former pulled ahead. While some may have perceived that as an obvious win at first due to “The Father” being a British film, it proved to be no fluke at all as both Florian Zeller and Christopher Hampton also emerged victorious on Oscar night. At this year’s WGA Awards “The Power of the Dog” wasn’t nominated as it was deemed ineligible, so “CODA” managed to win in its absence. That should put the latter in a pretty great position to win the Oscar as it now has prizes from both major screenwriting industry awards.
The last time a film won Best Adapted Screenplay at WGA and BAFTA but ended up losing the Oscar was “Up in the Air” back in 2009, when “Precious” pulled off a big upset. The former losing was likely in part a result of all the behind-the-scenes tension between writer/director Jason Reitman and co-writer Sheldon Turner because Reitman wasn’t giving Turner credit on the awards circuit. While it’s not impossible to overcome that stat, it’s still hard to go against that much precedent at this point.
With Campion looking like a lock for a Best Director win, academy members may want to spread the wealth by giving Best Adapted Screenplay to a different movie. She may have already won the Critics’ Choice Award for Best Adapted Screenplay for “The Power of the Dog,” but that journalist group doesn’t overlap with the industry professionals who make up the academy. Plus, Critics Choice hasn’t correctly forecast the eventual Oscar winner since “Call Me By Your Name” in 2017.
In 2018 Barry Jenkins won Critics Choice for “If Beale Street Could Talk.” Yet the Oscar went to “BlacKkKlansman,” which gave filmmaker Spike Lee his first competitive win. In 2019 Greta Gerwig won Critics Choice for her adaptation of “Little Women,” but the Oscar went to the WGA and BAFTA winner, Taika Waititi for “Jojo Rabbit.” Last year Chloé Zhao won Critics Choice for writing “Nomadland.” Despite going on to win Oscars for directing and producing that same movie, she lost Best Adapted Screenplay to “The Father.”
Though the difference there may be that “Nomadland” was already vulnerable due to it not being a very dialogue-driven script, while “The Father” was seen as an achievement in adapting a stage play into a very cinematic feature film. With “The Power of the Dog,” Campion has not only gotten a lot of acclaim for her directing, but also for adapting Thomas Savage‘s 1967 novel of the same name. Then again, the fact that “CODA,” an American independent film, managed to win a Best Adapted Screenplay prize from a British awards group could be a sign of strength for the movie. Either way, it’s looking likely that a woman will be winning this category for the first time since 2005 when Diana Ossana (in collaboration with Larry McMurtry) prevailed for “Brokeback Mountain.”
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