2025 Oscars: Best Original Screenplay Predictions

Marcus Jones
·3 min read

Nominations voting is from January 8-12, 2025, with official Oscar nominations announced January 17, 2025. Final voting is February 11-18, 2025. And finally, the 97th Oscars telecast will be broadcast on Sunday, March 2 and air live on ABC at 7:00 p.m. ET/ 4:00 p.m. PT. We update our picks through awards season, so keep checking IndieWire for all our 2025 Oscar predictions.

The State of the Race

Despite the pessimism around the decline in theater-going the first half of the year, there actually have been plenty of films that have been given enough of a platform to enter the Best Original Screenplay conversation, even at this early juncture.

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Diving into the breakout films from Sundance in January and Cannes in May, the two films that received awards for their screenplay specifically were “A Real Pain,” from Oscar-nominated actor turned filmmaker Jesse Eisenberg, and Coralie Fargeat’s “The Substance,” respectively. More films that took advantage of Sundance as a launchpad include Sean Wang’s coming of age dramedy “Dìdi,” which won the audience award, plus premieres like “I Saw the TV Glow” from Jane Schoenbrun and “A Different Man” from Aaron Schimberg, which both had already secured distribution from A24, and have now taken their ultra-indie writer-directors to a new level of recognition.

But if history were to repeat itself, it is more likely that the 2024 Cannes Film Festival screened films that are more likely to break into the Oscar race. For instance, fresh off “Poor Things,” which was nominated for Best Adapted Screenplay, filmmaker Yorgos Lanthimos premiered “Kinds of Kindness” at the spring festival, his first feature-length collaboration with screenwriter Efthimis Filippou since their 2017 film “The Lobster,” which netted the pair a Best Original Screenplay Oscar nomination. That same year, “The Florida Project” remained right on the Oscar bubble, but with a Palme d’Or now under his belt, Sean Baker is more likely to take his new film “Anora” all the way in several categories, including this one.

There is still so much more to come, from Francis Ford Coppola and M. Night Shyamalan both taking big, exciting swings with their respective films “Megalopolis” and “Trap,” to Oscar-winning filmmakers Steve McQueen, Pedro Almodóvar, and Andrea Arnold all re-entering the race with “Blitz,” “The Room Next Door,” and “Bird.”

But if there is one really fascinating story bubbling up within the screenplay races right now, it is writer Justin Kuritzkes possibly being nominated for both Best Adapted Screenplay and Best Original Screenplay, should “Queer” be received well and the fall, and more importantly, should “Challengers” have the staying power to find a second wind during awards season. If that were to happen, the burgeoning screenwriter, who happens to be married to 2024 Best Original Screenplay nominee Celine Song (“Past Lives”), would be the first since Coppola to accomplish that feat.

Potential nominees are listed in alphabetical order; no film will be deemed a frontrunner until we have seen it.

Frontrunners:
Jesse Eisenberg (“A Real Pain”)
Efthimis Filippou and Yorgos Lanthimos (“Kinds of Kindness”)
Alex Garland (“Civil War”)
Justin Kuritzkes (“Challengers”)
Sean Wang (“Dìdi”)

Contenders:
Pedro Almodóvar (“The Room Next Door”)
Andrea Arnold (“Bird”)
Jacques Audiard (“Emilia Pérez”)
Sean Baker (“Anora”)
Francis Ford Coppola (“Megalopolis”)
Coralie Fargeat (“The Substance”)
Azazel Jacobs (“His Three Daughters”)
Mike Leigh (“Hard Truths”)
Steve McQueen (“Blitz”)
Nick Payne (“We Live in Time”)
Daina O. Pusić (“Tuesday”)  
Aaron Schimberg (“A Different Man”)
Jane Schoenbrun (“I Saw the TV Glow”)
M. Night Shyamalan (“Trap”)
Nathan Silver and C. Mason Wells (“Between the Temples”)

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