USC Scripter Awards: ‘American Fiction’ and ‘Slow Horses’ Take Top Honors

The writers behind the feature American Fiction and the TV adaptation Slow Horses took home the top honors at the USC Scripter Awards, which honors the best adapted projects of the year. Both the original authors as well as the screenwriters share the award.

In the film category, American Fiction (Cord Jefferson’s adaptation of Percival Everett’s novel Erasure) topped fellow nominees Killers of the Flower Moon (Eric Roth and Martin Scorsese’s adaptation of David Grann’s book Killers of the Flower Moon: The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI); Oppenheimer (Christopher Nolan’s adaptation of Kai Bird and Martin J. Sherwin’s book American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer); Origin (Ava DuVernay’s adaptation of Isabel Wilkerson’s book Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents); and Poor Things (Tony McNamara’s adaptation of Aliasdair Gray’s novel of the same name).

On the TV side, the episode of Apple TV+’s Slow Horses entitled “Negotiating with Tigers” (adapted by Will Smith from Mick Herron’s novel Real Tigers) won over an episode of Netflix’s The Crown called “Sleep, Dearie Sleep” (adapted by Peter Morgan from his his stage play The Audience); the episode of Amazon’s Daisy Jones and the Six entitled “Fire” (adapted by Scott Neustadter from the novel by Taylor Jenkins Reid); the episode of HBO Max’s The Last of Us entitled “Long, Long Time” (adapted by Neil Druckmann and Craig Mazin from the video game by Druckmann and Naughty Dog); and the episode of HBO Max’s Winning Time: The Rise of the Lakers Dynasty entitled “The New World” (adapted by Rodney Barnes, Max Borenstein and Jim Hecht from Jeff Pearlman’s book Showtime: Magic, Kareem, Riley and the Los Angeles Lakers Dynasty of the 1980s).

The Scripter has predicted the best adapted screenplay Oscar multiple times, including for last year’s winner, Women Talking, as well as Schindler’s List, Sense and Sensibility, L.A. Confidential, A Beautiful Mind, No Country for Old Men, Slumdog Millionaire, The Social Network, The Descendants, Argo, 12 Years a Slave, The Imitation Game, The Big Short, Moonlight and Call Me by Your Name

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