4. Stanley Kubrick
Readers of mine here at WhatCulture will know me as a great Kubrick fan and whilst he is most accomplished as a director and cinematographer he is also one of the very best screenwriters, having penned most of his films himself or with contributions from others. Kubrick made sixteen films, twelve of which are his professional films. Of those sixteen, he wrote thirteen of them he was unaccredited as a screenwriter for Lolita alongside Nabokov. On a few occasions he included others in the writing project, most notably with 2001 and The Shining. His contributions at the pen and behind the camera are among the most important in the history of cinema but his greatest disappointment is also mine, the end of Napoleon, the greatest film never made. If youve ever seen 2001, A Clockwork Orange and Dr. Strangelove youll know that he was a genius but if youve ever read the script for Napoleon youll know that he was beyond that. The research put in was awe-inspiring and Napoleon truly is the greatest script ever made and it is a crying shame it was never filmed. The awful news though is that Kubrick-devotee Steven Spielberg is developing the script into a mini-series for Television. Kubricks scripts were often adaptations of short stories or novels and that isnt to diminish what he created at all because any filmmaker will tell you that adapting is great, it is turning a good work into a great work for the screen and it can often be a hard process. But his contribution was wonderful, both on and off the screen.
Best Screenplay: Napoleon