The USC Libraries have revealed the 38th USC Scripter Awards, and the surprises weren’t among the film nominees, but the television ones. An honor that rewards both the screenwriter and the writer of the adapted work, the film nominees saw “Hamnet,” “Frankenstein,” “One Battle After Another,” “Train Dreams” and, in a mild upset, “Peter Hujar’s Day.” The television nominees included “Death by Lightning,” “Dark Winds,” “Dept. Q,” “Wolf Hall: The Mirror and the Light,” and, once again, “Slow Horses.”
The committees that determine that Scripters change every year, but this is the fourth nomination for “Slow Horses,” which won the prize in 2023 and 2024.
On the film side, Zhao previously won this honor in 2021 for “Nomadland.” Del Toro was previously nominated for “Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio,” while Anderson was nominated for “Inherent Vice” and “There Will Be Blood.” This is the second nomination for both Bentley and Kwedar, who earned a nom last year for “Sing Sing.”
Films overlooked in this category over the past year include “Hedda,” “Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery,” “Nouvelle Vague,” “Bugonia,” and “No Other Choice.” Omitted television series include, inexplicably, “Andor,” “Alien: Earth,” “Forever,” “Dying for Sex,” and “Dope Thief,” among others.
The USC Libraries Literary Achievement Award will be given to Michael Connelly at the Scripter ceremony for “his contributions to the art of mystery storytelling, both on the page and on the screen.” Connelly’s creations include police detective Harry Bosch and defense attorney Mickey Haller, which have inspired numerous screen adaptations, including the “Bosch,” “Bosch: Legacy,” and “Ballard” series, the film and television series, “The Lincoln Lawyer,” and the 2002 feature film “Blood Work.”
The winning authors and screenwriters at a ceremony on Saturday, Jan. 24.
The finalist writers for film adaptation are, in alphabetical order by film title:
*Guillermo del Toro for “Frankenstein” based on the novel “Frankenstein; or, the Modern Prometheus” by Mary Shelley
*Chloe Zhao and Maggie O’Farrell for “Hamnet” based on O’Farrell’s novel of the same name
*Paul Thomas Anderson for “One Battle After Another” inspired by the novel “Vineland” by Thomas Pynchon
*Ira Sachs for “Peter Hujar’s Day” based on the book of the same name by Linda Rosenkrantz
*Clint Bentley and Greg Kwedar for “Train Dreams” based on the novella of the same name by Denis Johnson
The finalist writers for episodic series are, in alphabetical order by series title:
*Max Hurwitz and Billy Luther for the episode “Ábidoo’niidę́ę́ (What He Had Been Told),” from “Dark Winds,” based on the novels “Dancehall of the Dead” and “The Sinister Pig” by Tony Hillerman
*Mike Makowsky for the episode “Destiny of the Republic,” from “Death by Lightning,” based on Candice Millard’s nonfiction book “Destiny of the Republic: A Tale of Madness, Medicine, and the Murder of a President”
*Chandni Lakhani and Scott Frank for the untitled first episode of “Dept. Q,” based on the novel “The Keeper of Lost Causes” by Jussi Adler-Olsen
*Will Smith for the episode “Scars,” from “Slow Horses,” based on the novel “London Rules” by Mick Herron
*Peter Straughan for the series “Wolf Hall: The Mirror and the Light,” based on the novel “The Mirror and the Light” by Hilary Mantel
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