WGA rules a number of Oscar hopefuls ineligible

As is the case around this time each year, the Writers Guild of America has released their list of eligible titles for their Writers Guild Awards, which in turn clues us in to with scripts were ruled ineligible for consideration. Late last week, the WGA’s list of films not up for their award was revealed on a few sites, with it working as a factor not just in predicting their guild’s award, but also in seeing how this could impact the larger Oscar race. Remember, perception is important, so if you aren’t nominated here, even if it’s just due to a silly rule, it can have an effect… The guild always declares a number of movies not eligible for their award, normally either because of the writer not being a member, too much improvisation/changes from the script, a lack of filed paperwork, as well as a production done with an animated or foreign company that the guild doesn’t have an agreement with. That usually knocks out a handful of fringe contenders, one or two likely nominees, and a few that were probably never getting cited by Oscar anyway. It can confuse Academy members at times, but the side effect is that the WGA award nominees can sometimes be a more interesting bunch than the ones cited by AMPAS. These here are the titles that are not part of the 51 Adapted Screenplay contenders that the WGA has approved of: 45 Years Anomalisa Brooklyn The Danish Girl Me and Earl and the Dying Girl Room From this group, only really Brooklyn and Room were locked in, though Anomalisa certainly has a shot with Oscar. 45 Years, The Danish Girl, plus Me and Earl and the Dying Girl were definitely in contention, so this hurts them, though it’s not a crippling blow or anything of the sort. The negatives are for Brooklyn and Room, either of which could have used a win here to boos their chances of winning the Academy Award as well. They’ll still be nominated, but the path to win might be a bit bumpier than they were previously expecting. That being said, this omissions were hardly surprises, so perhaps they had already factored this in? Next, these are the titles not among the 61 Original Screenplay contenders from the Writer’s Guild: 99 Homes Clouds of Sils Maria Ex Machina The Hateful Eight I’ll See You In My Dreams Inside Out Ricki and the Flash Son of Saul Suffragette Youth This is a larger group obviously, though it’s a less [...]