USC Scripter Awards Announce Finalists, Including Major Best Adapted Screenplay Contenders

The USC Libraries have named the 2026 finalists for their 38th annual Scripter Awards, which honor the year’s most accomplished adaptations of the written word for the screen. The awards, which go to one film and one television series, recognize both the authors of the original works and the screenwriters who adapted them.

Additionally, author Michael Connelly, responsible for the novels that became hit television series like “Bosch” and “The Lincoln Lawyer,” will accept the USC Libraries Literary Achievement Award at the Scripter ceremony for his contributions to the art of mystery storytelling, both on the page and on the screen.

On the film side, the Scripter Award has been a serious bellwether for the Oscars, having predicted four out of five of the last few Best Adapted Screenplay award winners. Screenwriter Peter Straughan, who won the film award in 2025 for “Conclave” alongside novelist Robert Harris, is nominated again this year for the TV award for his work adapting Hilary Mantel’s novel “The Mirror and the Light” into the PBS series “Wolf Hall: The Mirror and the Light.”

One unique element to the Scripter Awards is that, in their focus on honoring the written word as a source of inspiration for screen storytellers, only works adapted from books or book series, novellas, short stories, graphic novels, plays, or magazine articles are eligible. The rules have changed this year for video game adaptations like “The Last of Us” and “Fallout” to no longer be eligible. Characters originating in previously published works are also not considered eligible source material, so films like “Wake Up Dead Man” and “Bugonia” were not in the running for the film award.

The 2026 Scripter selection committee selected the finalists from a field of 43 film and 64 television adaptations. USC professor Howard Rodman, a former president of the Writers Guild of America, West, chairs the committee, which includes journalists, authors, screenwriters, producers, and Elizabeth Daley, dean of the USC School of Cinematic Arts.

The USC Libraries will announce the winning authors and screenwriters at a black-tie ceremony on Saturday, Jan. 24, 2026, in the Town & Gown ballroom at the University of Southern California.

The finalist writers for film adaptation are, in alphabetical order by film title: 

Guillermo del Toro for “Frankenstein” based on the novel “Frankenstein; or, the Modern Prometheus” by Mary Shelley

Chloe Zhao and Maggie O’Farrell for “Hamnet” based on O’Farrell’s novel of the same name

Paul Thomas Anderson for “One Battle After Another” based on the novel “Vineland” by Thomas Pynchon

Ira Sachs for “Peter Hujar’s Day” based on the book of the same name by Linda Rosenkrantz

Clint Bentley and Greg Kwedar for “Train Dreams” based on the novella of the same name by Denis Johnson

The finalist writers for episodic series are, in alphabetical order by series title: 

Max Hurwitz and Billy Luther for the episode “Ábidoo’niidę́ę́ (What He Had Been Told),” from “Dark Winds,” based on the novels “Dancehall of the Dead” and “The Sinister Pig” by Tony Hillerman 

Mike Makowsky for the episode “Destiny of the Republic,” from “Death by Lightning,” based on Candice Millard’s nonfiction book “Destiny of the Republic: A Tale of Madness, Medicine, and the Murder of a President” 

Chandni Lakhani and Scott Frank for the untitled first episode of “Dept. Q,” based on the novel “The Keeper of Lost Causes” by Jussi Adler-Olsen 

Will Smith for the episode “Scars,” from “Slow Horses,” based on the novel “London Rules” by Mick Herron 

Peter Straughan for the series “Wolf Hall: The Mirror and the Light,” based on the novel “The Mirror and the Light” by Hilary Mantel