The Writers Guild of America announced the nominations for their awards. Gone Girl, Boyhood, Foxcatcher and The Grand Budapest Hotel were among the nominees, while one unexpected blockbuster made the list.
Up first in the original screenplay category is: Boyhood (Richard Linklater); Foxcatcher (E. Max Frye & Dan Futterman); The Grad Budapest Hotel (Wes Anderson, story by Wes Anderson & Huge Guinness); Nightcrawler (Dan Gilroy); and Whiplash (Damien Chazelle).
The adapted nominees are: American Sniper (Jason Hall); Gone Girl (Gillian Flynn); Guardians of the Galaxy (James Gunn & Nicole Perlman); The Imitation Game (Graham Moore); and Wild (Nick Hornby).
There are two interesting nominees of note. First off, while the WGA considers Whiplash an original screenplay, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences will not. According to Deadline, this is because writer/director Damien Chazelle shot a 18-minute scene from the film first and it was released as a short in 2012. Since AMPAS considers the short as the media that the film is based on, it will not consider Chazelle’s acclaimed script as an original work.
Next, Guardians of the Galaxy surprisingly got a nomination for adapted screenplay. Does that mean that the comic book movie really has a shot at getting a writing Oscar nomination? Probably not, since Oscar bait like Unbroken or The Theory of Everything will be considered.
The WGA awards are on Feb. 14 at the Hyatt Regency Century Plaza Hotel in LA. You can check out the TV nominees here.
image of Gillian Flynn courtesy of Kristin Callahan/ACE/INFphoto.com