10. David O. Russell & Eric Singer - American Hustle
I thought David O. Russell might swoop in and snatch the Best Adapted Screenplay award at last year's Oscar ceremony for his delightful adaptation of the Matthew Quick novel, Silver Linings Playbook, but it turned out the Academy's love for Argo was absolute enough to hand that film's scribe, Chris Terrio, the Oscar. Don't pity Russell too much though, because he may very well take a writing Oscar home in 2014 (along with co-writer Eric Singer) for his latest effort, American Hustle. If you haven't heard of the upcoming film yet (and if you haven't then clearly you have not read any of my other 2014 Oscar category previews, as the film has seemingly come up in about every article), American Hustle chronicle's the FBI's fascinating Abscam operation that took place in the late-1970s/early 1980's. The scheme ended up taking down numerous corrupt politicians who fell for con artists posed as rich Arab investors offering politicians bribe money per the FBI's sting setup. Despite the fact that the film's story derives from actual occurrences, the film's script is not wholly based off of any previously written or published material, which is why it will fall under the Best Original Screenplay category. This "based a on true story" blurb will likely only help the chances of American Hustle's screenplay to receive some Oscar recognition, as the Academy historically has a hankering for hidden history (a la Argo). This fact is something that can not often be said of most Original Screenplay nominees, so it should give American Hustle a slight edge over some of its competitors. Beyond this material advantage though, I also expect the movie to be expertly crafted when it comes to the film's script. David O. Russell's kinetic, screwball-esque style of dark humor sounds pitch perfect given the subject matter of the film, and considering the original title of the movie was American Bullshit, I expect there to be at least slight satirical overtones about the corruptness of the American government as well. With a huge ensemble cast made up of contemporary A-listers (Christian Bale, Bradley Cooper, Amy Adams, Jennifer Lawrence, Jeremy Renner, and Robert De Niro), this is likely to be a film with a lot of moving parts, which typically spells "writer-y" to Academy voters (yet another good sign for the screenplay). I expect American Hustle to play significantly in the 2014 awards season, and there is no reason to suspect the film's script won't be apart of that too.