Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay | |
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Country | United States |
Presented by | Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS) |
First awarded | 1929 |
Currently held by |
Adam McKay Charles Randolph The Big Short (2015) |
Official website | oscars |
The Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay is one of the Academy Awards, the most prominent film awards in the United States. It is awarded each year to the writer of a screenplay adapted from another source (usually a novel, play, short story, or TV show but sometimes another film). All sequels are automatically considered adaptations by this standard (since the sequel must be based on the original story).
See also the Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay, a similar award for screenplays that are not adaptations.
The first person to win twice in this category is Joseph L. Mankiewicz, who won the award in two consecutive years, 1950 and 1951. Others to win twice in this category include: George Seaton, Robert Bolt (who also won in consecutive years), Francis Ford Coppola, Mario Puzo, Alvin Sargent, Ruth Prawer Jhabvala, Alexander Payne and Michael Wilson. Payne won both awards as part of a writing duo, with Jim Taylor, and writing trio, with Jim Rash and Nat Faxon. Michael Wilson was blacklisted at the time of his second Oscar, so the award was given to a front (novelist Pierre Boulle). However, the Academy officially recognized him as the winner several years later.
Frances Marion was the first woman to win in this category, in 1930.
Pierre Collings and Sheridan Gibney were the first to win for adapting their own work, for The Life of Emile Zola.