Call Me by Your Name and Greta Gerwig’s wonderful Lady Bird may be the undisputed heavyweights of the 2017-18 awards season, hoovering up nominations left, right and center, but a dark horse has emerged in the Writers Guild of America film nominations.
Its name? Logan, the noir-tinged mutant masterpiece that effectively brought the curtain down on Hugh Jackman’s career as Wolverine, the world’s most famous X-Men character. Initially released in March of last year, James Mangold’s R-rated feature has now been quietly pushed into the Oscar race, and its prospects of landing cinema’s top prize appear to be greater than one might assume.
That’s because Logan has officially been nominated for Best Adapted Screenplay by the Writers Guild of America, where it joins The Disaster Artist, Molly’s Game, Mudbound and, yes, Call Me By Your Name.
Call Me by Your Name, Screenplay by James Ivory; Based on the Novel by André Aciman; Sony Pictures Classics
The Disaster Artist, Screenplay by Scott Neustadter & Michael H. Weber; Based on the Book The Disaster Artist: My Life Inside the Room, the Greatest Bad Movie Ever Made by Greg Sestero and Tom Bissell; A24
Logan, Screenplay by Scott Frank & James Mangold and Michael Green; Story by James Mangold; Based on Characters from the X-Men Comic Books and Theatrical Motion Pictures; Twentieth Century Fox Film
Molly’s Game, Screenplay by Aaron Sorkin; Based on the Book by Molly Bloom; STX Entertainment
Mudbound, Screenplay by Virgil Williams and Dee Rees; Based on the Novel by Hillary Jordan; Netflix
Previous winners include Moonlight (original) and Denis Villeneuve’s Arrival (adapted), so even this nomination alone places Logan in the company of greatness. It’s worth noting, too, that select films, including Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri, were omitted from today’s nominations because they are not WGA signatories. That’s a bummer for Martin McDonagh, who injected a cracking balance of heart and humor into the film’s script, but it does open up the field for dark horses like Logan to stake their claim.
So happy! Thank you WGA! https://t.co/l13IbkZtPg
— Mangold (@mang0ld) January 4, 2018
The WGA will announce the winners of its 70th annual awards on February 11th, at which point we’ll have our fingers and claws crossed for Logan. Elsewhere on the awards circuit, the nominations for this year’s Academy Awards will be unveiled on January 23rd, so keep your peepers peeled.
