By Joey Magidson
Film Contributor
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Most years, one can find almost all of the Best Picture hopefuls contained in both the Best Adapted Screenplay and Best Original Screenplay categories. With 10 slots overall, at least half of the nominees are always present, if not more. The two categories are not looked at equally, though, as the Adapted contenders are consistently considered the better Oscar bet than their Original counterparts.
That’s certainly the perception, but is it actually the Academy Awards reality? Do adapted screenplays really have an easier road to Oscar glory than Original ones? In order to try and answer this question in a way that has modern applications, I’m going to focus on solely the past 25 years. That way, we can keep it relevant and not have too unwieldy of a sample size.
When I went back and took a look at the last quarter-decade, I came up with some results that I think you’ll all find rather interesting. While neither black nor white, the statistics show a shade of grey that fits in with most other supposed “rules” of how Academy members vote.
Eleven of the past 25 Best Picture winners have been based on Original Screenplays, which is just under half, so adapted screenplays do tend to win Best Picture more often. That being said, it’s hardly the overwhelming majority that many seem to assume, and it’s nearly equal during this part of Oscar’s history.
For those wondering, the Original Screenplay films that triumphed in Best Picture are The Artist, The King’s Speech, The Hurt Locker, Crash, Gladiator, American Beauty, Shakespeare in Love, Titanic, Braveheart, Unforgiven and Rain Man.
By comparison, the Adapted victors were Slumdog Millionaire, No Country for Old Men, The Departed, Million Dollar Baby, The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King, Chicago, A Beautiful Mind, The English Patient, Forrest Gump, Schindler’s List, The Silence of the Lambs, Dances with Wolves, Driving Miss Daisy and The Last Emperor.
Only seven times in that quarter-century I looked at did the Best Picture winner not also win their Screenplay category. Three times it happened to Adapted contenders, while four times it happened to Originals. Three of those times the films were nominated, but once an Original wasn’t even nominated. The Adapted screenplays that lost were Million Dollar Baby, Chicago and The English Patient. The Originals that came up short were Gladiator, Braveheart, and Unforgiven, while Titanic wound up not even being nominated.
Why is it such a preconceived notion that Adapted films do better than Original ones with Oscar? Well, to some degree it comes down to the fact that the movies based on previously published materials already have some idea that they’re Academy friendly, while you get no such guarantee with new concepts for flicks.
Look back at that list of the winners from above, and you’ll see further proof of this. The Original winners are often films that weren’t pegged initially for Oscar love. They tend to be the “darker” or “edgier” choices that the Academy makes. There are certainly exceptions (just look at The King’s Speech for a recent example), but by and large these victors are the “cool” contenders.
On the flip side, the Adapted winners have sometimes seemed to be ready-made Oscar players from the get-go. You do still get out-of-the-box tales of triumph like with Slumdog Millionaire, but something like A Beautiful Mind or The English Patient clearly is made with at least one eye pointed toward awards. This is not to say that Adapted Screenplays have less passion in them or anything, but they do tend to have an easier time attracting initial Oscar buzz, if not eventual trophies themselves.
There are some interesting patterns to be found in the last 25 years as well. Coming into this latest Oscar season, we’ve been on a streak of Original contenders winning the last three Best Picture prizes, though before that Adapted winners had their own streak.
This brings us to 2012, which is looking like a year that solidly favors the Adapted contenders over the Original ones. By every measure out there, the films based on books or magazine articles are in the pole position, while the content that first came to life in script form is lagging behind somewhat.
Of the nine films in contention for Best Picture, six are in the Adapted category, and only three are from the Original field. The latter are Amour, Django Unchained and Zero Dark Thirty. None of these films has a particularly good shot at winning anymore, though Zero Dark Thirty did have a shot before the nominations were announced.
It’s looking like a race between the Adapted films, which are Argo, Beasts of the Southern Wild, Les Miserables, Life of Pi, Lincoln and Silver Linings Playbook for Best Picture. The conventional wisdom at the moment has Argo and Lincoln out in the lead, with Silver Linings Playbook right behind them. I’m pretty confident in Argo’s chances right now, but one thing is for certain: It’s going to be a victory for an adapted screenplay no matter the outcome.