Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay — Top 20 Ranked

Jordan Peele breathed new life into the horror genre with his 2017 film
Get Out. But although the film received a lot of critical acclaim, many were uncertain whether or not it would be honored by the Academy — horror movies and horror scripts don’t have a great track record of success at the Oscars.

Get Out proved its doubters wrong though and ultimately took home the top honor for Best Original Screenplay because of its brilliant social commentary and multi-layered themes. 

There are a lot of people who consider Charlie Kaufman one of the greatest living screenwriters. Personally, I’m not his biggest fan, but it’s easy to see why so many love his works. When I think Kaufman, I think of two words: ambition and vision.

Every script from Kaufman is something different, something absurd, or something surreal. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind is probably his most famous script and the only one to nab him an Oscar win.

Mel Brooks is regarded as one of the great comedy writers of the 20th century and his 1967 film The Producers is one of his best. One great screenwriting exercise is to think of the most asinine subject matter possible, and begin writing it out — that must have been what Brooks did with The Producers.

The film follows two Broadways financiers who have to stage the worst musical possible. Their plan? Stage a musical that glowingly praises Nazis called “Springtime for Hitler.” The Producers wasn’t exactly “universally praised” upon its release in 1967, but over the years it’s developed a cult following, largely due in part to its biting satire.

Spike Jonze certainly deserved the Best Original Screenplay Oscar for Her. In another writer’s hands, Her could’ve easily been a heavy-handed tale about the perils of AI, but Jonze found humanity hidden in robotic subject matter.

Her is a surprisingly tender film that makes great use of two great performances from Joaquin Phoenix and Scarlett Johansson. But it should be noted that everything that’s structurally great about Her was built in the script.

Fun fact: Sofia Coppola won the Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay 33 years after her father, Francis Ford Coppola won the same honor. The duo are the only father-daughter combo to ever win the award.

Lost in Translation is an iconic film and its script is a big reason why. There are so many moments in the script where Coppola lets the images speak for themselves — that may sound like an easy thing to do, but it’s remarkably difficult to pull off.

Pulp Fiction is widely regarded as Quentin Tarantino’s best work and one of the best movies of the 1990s. Tarantino wrote the Pulp Fiction script based on stories by himself and Roger Avary.

Perhaps the most notable aspect of the Pulp Fiction screenplay is its non-linear structure. Since scenes take place out of sequential order, we’re enticed to see how things will come together. In the end, Pulp Fiction proves to be more than the sum of its parts.

On the Waterfront won the Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay in 1954, but it was technically based on a true-crime report by Malcolm Johnson, who won a Pulitzer Prize for his work.

Technicalities aside, On the Waterfront is truly an incredible story, and it features one of Marlon Brando’s best performances.

If you’ve ever dreamed of becoming a screenwriter, and you haven’t read
The Usual Suspects, then you definitely should. I hate to use the term “standard,” but The Usual Suspects really does take all of the story beats we consider “standard” and executes them to perfection.

There’s nothing crazy about The Usual Suspects — it’s just a really well-told story that has a structurally solid foundation. Oftentimes, we get used to seeing sensational scripts win the big awards, but The Usual Suspects proves that sometimes it’s all about the fundamentals.

Did you know that Ben Affleck is the youngest writer to ever win the Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay? At the time of their win, Affleck was just 25, and co-writer Matt Damon was 27. Funny enough, the previous youngest winner was Orson Welles, who was 26 when he was given the award for
Citizen Kane.

Good Will Hunting proved that authenticity can sometimes be a script’s greatest strength. Affleck and Damon turned their hometown of Boston into the backdrop for an emotional story of two lost souls who help each other move past their own trauma.

For more on the film, check out our Good Will Hunting script teardown.

It seems just about everyday when I sit down to watch TV news that I find myself thinking back to Paddy Chayefsky’s Network. I suppose that sentiment is true for most who have seen the film or read the script — there’s something utterly haunting about it, and subsequently, its implications on mass media. 

Paddy Chayefsky won two Academy Awards for Best Original Screenplay
(The Hospital and Network), as well as one Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay (Marty).

Woody Allen has been nominated for more Best Original Screenplay Oscars than any other screenwriter, and it’s not even close. Federico Fellini takes second place with six nominations, a whopping ten spots below Allen.

Few would refute that Annie Hall is one of Woody Allen’s best movies.
Annie Hall is widely considered to be one of the greatest screenplays of all-time, original or adapted.

To say that Citizen Kane is a masterpiece would be an understatement. Orson Welles became an overnight sensation for his work writing, directing, and starring in Citizen Kane, a film widely regarded as the greatest ever made. 

The Citizen Kane screenplay has been subject to controversy over the years. In the 1970s, reports circulated that Welles involvement in the scriptwriting process was minimal and that Herman Mankiewicz wasn’t given enough credit for his authorship. In recent years, those reports have been proven false — Welles and Mankiewicz share credit for the script and the Oscar. 

There’s usually a fair amount of subjectivity in what gets the top honor on a list like this, but the script most deserving of the top honor here couldn’t be clearer. You’d be hard-pressed to find a dozen screenwriters who don’t consider Robert Towne’s Chinatown the best original screenplay of all-time.

Chinatown is a masterfully constructed story that leaves no threads loose. Perhaps that’s one reason why its ending is so well-regarded, and widely studied in college classrooms across the world.

Whether you’re a screenwriter, literary writer, or movie fan, there’s tremendous value in studying the Chinatown screenplay.