Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay

• 1. Introduction

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  The Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay was handed, at the 30th Academy Awards, to a man who had not written the script. The award for The Bridge on the River Kwai went to Pierre Boulle, the French novelist whose book inspired the film. Boulle served as the official front for the real screenwriter, Michael Wilson. Wilson had been blacklisted by Hollywood and could not be publicly credited. Several years later, the Academy officially recognized Wilson as the true winner.

  That reversal points to something the category's long history keeps confirming: the story of who gets credit for an adaptation is rarely uncomplicated. The Best Adapted Screenplay award has existed since the Academy's very first ceremony. It honors writers who transform existing works into films. The most frequently adapted form is the novel. The category has also recognized adaptations from stage plays, musicals, short stories, television series, and other films.

  Nearly a century of ceremonies have produced a catalog of firsts and milestones. Which writer first won the award twice, doing so in back-to-back years? Which families shared the honor? And which voices, long excluded from Hollywood, finally broke through to claim it?

• 2. The Double Winners

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  Joseph L. Mankiewicz won for A Letter to Three Wives in 1949, then won again the following year for All About Eve. No writer in this category had managed consecutive wins before him. Robert Bolt matched that feat, winning for Doctor Zhivago and then for A Man for All Seasons the following year.

  Mario Puzo and Francis Ford Coppola took the award for The Godfather in 1972, then again for The Godfather Part II in 1974. Puzo's novel The Godfather is the only single source work in the category's history to produce two wins for its own author. E. M. Forster's novels achieved a related distinction. Ruth Prawer Jhabvala won for adapting A Room with a View and then for adapting Howards End. One author's body of work produced two winning results through another writer's craft.

  Alexander Payne reached two wins through different writing teams. He won for Sideways alongside Jim Taylor, and for The Descendants with Jim Rash and Nat Faxon.

  Larry McMurtry is the only writer who won by adapting someone else's work, while his own novel was separately adapted into an Oscar-winning script by a different writer. He won for Brokeback Mountain, adapting Annie Proulx's short story. His novel Terms of Endearment had previously been adapted into a winning film by someone else.

  Christopher Hampton's two wins stand 32 years apart: Dangerous Liaisons in 1988 and The Father in 2020.

• 3. Women and Couples

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  Frances Marion won for The Big House at the 1929-30 ceremony, the first woman to claim any screenplay prize. Her win came before the Academy divided writing into separate original and adapted categories. When that split arrived, a new first became possible.

  Sarah Y. Mason took that first in 1932-33, adapting Louisa May Alcott's novel for Little Women. She shared the award with her husband, Victor Heerman. No married couple had ever won in this category together before them. The only other married pair to share the prize is Peter Jackson and Fran Walsh. They won together for The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King.

  Emma Thompson won for her adapted screenplay for Sense and Sensibility in 1995. She is the only winner in this category who also holds an acting Oscar.

  John Huston won for The Treasure of the Sierra Madre and received an acting nomination, though not a win in that category. Billy Bob Thornton won for Sling Blade under the same combination of circumstances. Thornton's film is among just three winning adaptations whose films were never nominated for Best Picture. The other two are Charles Schnee's The Bad and the Beautiful and Bill Condon's Gods and Monsters.

• 4. Sibling Stories

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  Philip G. Epstein and Julius J. Epstein won for Casablanca in 1943, becoming the first siblings to take this award. They shared it with Howard Koch. No pair of siblings had previously won together in the category.

  James Goldman won for The Lion in Winter in 1968. His brother William Goldman claimed the award eight years later for All the President's Men. They became the first siblings to win for two entirely separate films.

  Joel Coen and Ethan Coen are the third sibling pair to win in this category. Their award came for No Country for Old Men.

  Scott Frank, James Mangold, and Michael Green became the first writers ever nominated for adapting a superhero comic book, with their screenplay for Logan. Their nomination opened the category to superhero source material for the first time.

• 5. Crossing Both Awards

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  Billy Wilder, Charles Brackett, and Paddy Chayefsky are among the writers who have won Academy Awards in both the original and adapted screenplay categories. Horton Foote, William Goldman, Robert Benton, Bo Goldman, Waldo Salt, Francis Ford Coppola, and the Coen brothers complete the group.

  Waldo Salt's adapted win came for Midnight Cowboy. Bo Goldman won for One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. Billy Wilder earned more nominations in the adapted category than any other writer in this group, with six total. John Huston, Eric Roth, and Richard Brooks each received four nominations.

  Two winners, William Monahan and Sian Heder, took the award by adapting not a novel or play but another full-length feature film. Monahan drew from the film Infernal Affairs for The Departed. Heder adapted the film La Famille Bélier for CODA. They are the only two winners to use a complete feature film as the credited source.

  As of 2020, only two groups of writers had been nominated for adapting an animated film. The writers of Shrek, including Ted Elliott, Roger S. H. Schulman, Joe Stillman, and Terry Rossio, were the first. The writers of Toy Story 3, including Michael Arndt, John Lasseter, Andrew Stanton, and Lee Unkrich, followed.

• 6. New Voices and Records

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  Geoffrey S. Fletcher won for Precious in 2009, adapting the novel Push by Sapphire. His win was the first time an African American writer had claimed any Oscar in the writing categories. John Ridley followed with 12 Years a Slave in 2013. Cord Jefferson won for American Fiction in 2023. All three won alone, without co-writers.

  Barry Jenkins and Tarell Alvin McCraney won together for Moonlight in 2016. Their screenplay drew from McCraney's own unpublished play. The two became the first African American writing duo to win in this category. Spike Lee and Kevin Willmott won for BlacKkKlansman in 2018, becoming the second African American duo to claim the award.

  Taika Waititi won for Jojo Rabbit in 2019, becoming the first person of Maori descent to receive the award.

  James Ivory was 89 years and 270 days old when he won for Call Me by Your Name. He is the oldest person ever to receive this award. Charlie Wachtel was 32 when he shared the BlacKkKlansman prize, the youngest winner in the category's history.

  Joseph L. Mankiewicz holds the record as the youngest person ever nominated in this category. He was 22 years and 236 days old when he received that nomination, for Skippy. That record remains his alone.