Guillermo del Toro’s “Frankenstein” and Paul Thomas Anderson’s “One Battle After Another” are among the film nominees that will compete Saturday for the 38th annual USC Libraries Scripter Award, which honors writers of adapted screenplays and the original works on which they are based.
Also nominated are the writers of “Hamnet,” “Peter Hujar’s Day” and “Train Dreams.”
For television programming, nominees are the series “Dark Winds,” “Death by Lightning,” “Dept. Q,” “London Rules,” “Slow Horses” and “Wolf Hall: The Mirror and the Light.”
The winners will be announced during a gala event at the USC Town & Gown ballroom.
During the event, author Michael Connelly, famed for his Harry Bosch detective novels, will receive the USC Libraries Literary Achievement Award.
The 2026 Scripter selection committee chose the finalists from a field of 43 film and 64 television adaptations.
USC professor Howard Rodman, a former president of the Writers Guild of America, West, chairs the committee. Among those serving on the panel are journalists Leonard Maltin and Justin Chang; authors Janet Fitch and Jonathan Lethem; screenwriters Eric Roth and Tyger Williams; producers Gail Mutrux and Jennifer Todd; and Elizabeth Daley, dean of the USC School of Cinematic Arts.
Here is the formal list of nominations:
FILM
— Guillermo del Toro for “Frankenstein: based on the novel “Frankenstein; or, the Modern Prometheus” by Mary Shelley
— Chloe Zhao and Maggie O’Farrell for “Hamnet” based on O’Farrell’s novel of the same name
— Paul Thomas Anderson for “One Battle After Another” inspired by the novel “Vineland” by Thomas Pynchon
— Ira Sachs for “Peter Hujar’s Day” based on the book of the same name by Linda Rosenkrantz
— Clint Bentley and Greg Kwedar for “Train Dreams” based on the novella of the same name by Denis Johnson
TELEVISION
— Max Hurwitz and Billy Luther for the episode “Ãbidoo’niidéé (What He Had Been Told),” from “Dark Winds,” based on the novels “Dancehall of the Dead” and “The Sinister Pig” by Tony Hillerman
— Mike Makowsky for the episode “Destiny of the Republic,” from “Death by Lightning,” based on Candice Millard’s nonfiction book “Destiny of the Republic: A Tale of Madness, Medicine, and the Murder of a President”
— Chandni Lakhani and Scott Frank for the untitled first episode of “Dept. Q,” based on the novel “The Keeper of Lost Causes” by Jussi Adler-Olsen
— Will Smith for the episode “Scars,” from “Slow Horses,” based on the novel “London Rules” by Mick Herron
— Peter Straughan for the series “Wolf Hall: The Mirror and the Light,” based on the novel “The Mirror and the Light” by Hilary Mantel