Best Adapted Screenplay Nominees at the 2026 Oscars, Ranked

The adapted screenplay category at the Oscars brings five films that rework existing material: a South Korean sci-fi, a Western novella, a dense novel, a horror classic, and an author adapting her own book. To rank them, the pieces were evaluated not just as films but alongside available screenplays and the original source material or films.

At number five is Bugonia, where Will Tracy tightens Save the Green Planet! into a darker, funnier, and more unsettling story. Tracy, who wrote The Menu, leans into mounting terror while preserving the comedy and shapes the material into a voice that suits Yorgos Lanthimos’s distinct style.

Number four belongs to Guillermo del Toro’s Frankenstein, a long-held passion project that blends Mary Shelley, the 1931 film, other adaptations and del Toro’s personal concerns; the screenplay reads more focused than the finished film and recasts the creature as the story’s moral center.

South Korea

adapted screenplay, 2026 oscars, bugonia, will tracy, yorgos lanthimos, the menu, del toro, frankenstein, mary shelley, sci-fi