Best Original Screenplay: Ranking Every Nominee of the 98th Academy Awards
Written by Andreas Babiolakis
Welcome to another year of the Academy Awards Project here on Films Fatale! We rank all of the nominees in each category every day.
Another year of going through the ten nominated screenplays at the Academy Awards. Let’s get this over with: the original screenplays are my jam, and the adapted screenplays are hit-or-miss. So, let’s just have a look here and… huh. It appears that I have been humbled. The 98th Academy Award nominees for Best Original Screenplay are quite great, but, to me, the Best Adapted Screenplay nominees are stacked and outshine their “original” counterparts quite a bit. I still think that the five original screenplays here are really good or excellent, but I can easily sort through these and declare a favourite and a predictable winner; that is not the case for the Best Adapted Screenplay nominees. One thing at a time: let us focus on these five nominees. What I look for in original screenplays are great stories, fully-fleshed characters, strong dialogue, every device serving a purpose and, of course, originality. I think the five nominees here are worthy of this conversation, and I hope you feel the same way. Even so, this was one of the easier categories to rank for me thus far. Here are your nominees for Best Original Screenplay, ranked from worst to best.
Warning: These blurbs may go into the details of a screenplay and may contain spoilers. Reader discretion is advised.
5. Blue Moon-Written by Robert Kaplow
While I am quite pleased that Robert Kaplow’s screenplay for Blue Moon wound up here, I still saw it as a no brainer to place it in last place. That isn’t to say that it is an unworthy nominee: I just felt like the other four nominations had more going for them. Still, taking one of the last days of songwriter Lorenz Hart’s life and containing the multitudes of his being in the span of one evening is no easy task. This could have been a chore to sit through, but Kaplow’s snippy dialogue and intriguing conversations make us feel like eavesdroppers who cannot help but want to partake in all of these discussions between Hart and his various passersby. We feel like we get acquainted with the late icon because of how much Kaplow exposes Hart’s vulnerability and charm (frequently at the same time). However, these main traits are mainly what the film has to offer, and I do believe the other four nominees do juggle more. So, Blue Moon is last but it is still a worthwhile nominee (I do also feel like Richard Linklater’s films are typically under-nominated by the Academy, so seeing a film that isn’t a part of the Before trilogy or Boyhood get two nominations is quite a treat).
4. Marty Supreme-Written by Ronald Bronstein & Josh Safdie
On one hand, I think the screenplay for Marty Supreme is great. The dialogue is hilarious and riveting. The characters are all so unique and I can tell everything about them from very few cues. The many events intertwining together is quite a marvel to behold, especially when the titular hustler’s plans come crashing down and his comeuppance nips him in the ass again and again. On the other, I feel like I must split hairs when it comes to ranking high-calibre nominees. As much as I love the film and feel like it is one of the best of 2025, when it comes to its screenplay, there are a couple of questionable choices, like leaving some of the storylines open and not concluded (like why was Kay Stone crying towards the end of the film; what happens to that poor dog; et cetera). These points don’t really effect how I feel about a wild ride of a film as a whole (I just view them as uncertainties in the wake of Marty’s countless, destructive mistakes), but when looking through these five nominees for this category, I do have to focus on these points a little bit more within this conversation.
3. Sinners-Written by Ryan Coogler
Much of the strength of Ryan Coogler’s screenplay for Sinners is its ability to blend genres. We have a straight-up vampiric horror film amalgamated with a Mississippi Delta drama and, finally, a celebration of Black music over the course of American history. Coogler makes this a seamless effort. I have Sinners placed third because I do feel like the writing here is strong but some of these ideas have been tackled before (mainly the vampire angle, in films like From Dusk Till Dawn or Near Dark that both utilize the horror creature’s conventions in similar ways); even so, that doesn’t mean that Sinners uses vampires worse (it is a far better film than From Dusk Till Dawn). It is one of the most interesting concepts and screenplays of 2025 and I would consider it a great one; there just happens to be two films with phenomenal screenplays that we have to get to.
2. It Was Just an Accident-Written by Jafar Panahi, Script Collaborators — Nader Saīvar, Shadmeh Rastin, Mehdi Mahmoudian
One of the best written films of 2025 is It Was Just an Accident. This guessing game of whether or not these strangers have the correct monster who tortured all of them years ago; regardless, is their decision to exact revenge warranted? A twisty, turny fable of fate, ethics, and moral dilemmas, It Was Just an Accident is a highly engrossing motion picture that leaves you guessing and squirming in your seat for the majority of its runtime. While occasionally comedic but primarily intense, It Was Just an Accident never eases up. This is true for the two pivotal sequences at the end: the one-shot conversation between accuser and the accused (there is some exceptional writing here), and the very last image that contains zero dialogue at all. Between the two sequences (one that embodies great writing via dialogue and character development, and the other that is masterful with its cues and visual descriptions), you can see how fantastic It Was Just an Accident’s screenplay is.
1. Sentimental Value-Written by Eskil Vogt, Joachim Trier
It took a lot for a film’s screenplay to beat It Was Just an Accident for me, but, if any film’s script could come out on top above Jafar Panahi’s film, it’s Joachim Trier’s Sentimental Value. This film is far less about having a winding guessing game than it is poetically rich and so textured and complex with its characters, situations, and settings (on that note, even the central house of the film feels like a character whom you fall in love with). I feel like each and every character is real, pure, vulnerable, flawed, and a legitimate being who has lived a full life. The relationships everyone has with one another are nuanced (nothing is simply black-and-white). And then there is the dialogue that is to die for: hyper-realistic yet poignant lines that provide major context to each scenario without ever coming off as false or synthetic. One of my all time favourite writers is Ingmar Bergman, and the writing in Sentimental Value is Bergman-esque, which could only be a good thing.
Who I Want To Win: I’m rooting for Joachim Trier and Eskil Vogt for Sentimental Value, but I would also love if It Was Just an Accident won here as well. These two screenplays are easily my favourite of the five (considering the calibre of the other three films, that’s saying a lot).
Who I Think Will Win: Realistically, I feel like this could only go to Ryan Coogler and Sinners. I feel like Coogler’s film has been continuously praised for its originality, and it is seen as the head-to-head competitor of Paul Thomas Anderson’s One Battle After Another. Screenplays are key indicators on Oscars night how the Academy is feeling. Should Sinners win here and One Battle After Another lose, Sinners can even win it all (it already is a major Best Picture contender, second only to Anderson’s film). If anything else wins, that could be the end for Sinners (what else could win? Perhaps It Was Just an Accident, but I don’t see Sinners losing this one at the moment), especially if One Battle After Another wins. Should both Sinners and One Battle After Another win, I still think Best Picture will be in favour of the latter film.
Andreas Babiolakis has a Masters degree in Film and Photography Preservation and Collections Management from Ryerson University, as well as a Bachelors degree in Cinema Studies from York University. His favourite times of year are the Criterion Collection flash sales and the annual Toronto International Film Festival.