The death of the original screenplay...?

2009-11-04 10:30:01

This week's favorite Oscar topic, besides last night's announcement that Alec Baldwin and Steve Martin will be co-hosting the awards, is where all the original screenplays have gone. The Hollywood Reporter's Steven Zeitchik points out the a dearth of obvious candidates for the "Best Original Screenplay" category. If "Up," "Inglourious Basterds" and "A Serious Man" are virtual locks, what else does that leave us with? Zeitchik proposes "(500) Days Of Summer," and maybe "The Hangover" or "Star Trek." (Yes, under the Academy's ever-dizzying, perpetually nonsensical rules, it's a possibility.) THE ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY MUST BE DEAD. Because "ever since the studios became obsessed with remakes and sequels, there's been a depletion of the kind of new ideas that once populated the category." Well, except that, unlike many of the other categories, Best Original Screenplay nominees don't have to have made a lot of money -- recent ones have included "Frozen River"...

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