Despite Oscar campaigning for Best Original Screenplay, “Barbie” has been deemed an Adapted Screenplay by the Writers Branch of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.
According to Variety, when official Oscar nominations open on January 11, 2024, members will only be able to vote for Barbie’s script as an adapted work. This only adds to a never ending debate of whether or not “Barbie” was an original or adapted screenplay — this has been going on for months.
Does a movie based on a doll actually mean it was adapted from source material? There’s technically no story being adapted here — writers Noah Baumbach and Greta Gerwig invented the plot from scratch. The only thing adapted were the dolls, which are Mattel property.
The Writers Guild of America had originally designated the film as an original work, which it will continue to do for the upcoming WGA Awards. However, the Academy, which has its own classification rules, has determined the film didn’t mean the criteria to be considered original.
The result is that now Original Screenplay is looking like a two-way race between “The Holdovers” and “Past Lives” — Justine Triet’s “Anatomy of a Fall” is my dark horse pick.
So, how’s it looking for “Barbie” in Adapted Screenplay? Not good. It’ll now have to contend with “Oppenheimer”, “Killers of the Flower Moon”, “Poor Things”, and “American Fiction.” A stacked category.