Eighth Grade and Can You Ever Forgive Me? were the big winners at the 2019 Writers Guild Awards, taking home Best Original Screenplay and Best Adapted Screenplay, respectively. With less than a week to go until the 91st Oscars, awards season remains as wide open as it’s ever been. A few categories have seen clear frontrunners emerge, though there are several – including Best Picture – that are more difficult to predict. Even those well-versed in following the twists and turns of an Oscar race aren’t sure what to make of things.
Typically, the major industry guilds shed light on how things will possibly turn out, but in 2019 they’ve only muddied the waters more. Green Book won Best Picture at the Producers Guild Awards, Black Panther won Best Cast as the Screen Actors Guild Awards, and Alfonso Cuarón received Best Director and the Directors Guild Awards. People were looking to the Writers Guild to finally make sense of this crazy race, but all WGA did was throw a few more curveballs.
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At last night’s Writers Guild Awards (via Deadline), Eighth Grade won Best Original Screenplay, beating out a field that also included Green Book, A Quiet Place, Roma, and Vice. On the Adapted side of things, Can You Ever Forgive Me? topped the likes of Black Panther, BlacKkKlansman, If Beale Street Could Talk, and A Star is Born.
What’s interesting about these wins is that neither Eighth Grade nor Can You Ever Forgive Me? gained much traction on the awards circuit. The former surprisingly earned zero Oscar nods despite its widespread critical acclaim, while the latter scored three Academy nominations (including Best Actress and Best Adapted Screenplay), but couldn’t crack the Best Picture lineup. In every other year this decade, the two WGA winners have also been up for the Best Picture Oscar, so many were shocked by this turn of events. Awards season is officially in unprecedented territory, as all of the major guild awards went to a different film for the first time. No single movie pulled ahead of the pack.
The Oscars have been making headlines for all the wrong reasons this year, but the unpredictability surrounding the top awards this year adds a much-needed layer of intrigue that’ll make tuning into the show a bit more fun. Usually by this point in the race, one or two titles are established as the strongest contenders and everyone else is just there to receive a participation trophy. Arguably, that makes for a boring viewing experience (unless someone is a die-hard fan of one of the favorites) since everyone knows going in how things will play out. It’ll be interesting to see who wins the Oscars, as it’s anyone’s ballgame right now.
