As we enter the 2026 awards season, nomination lists are starting to be released, with strong contenders and questionable ones across the lists, especially in the screenplays category, which saw some iconic work in 2025. Here, we will go through some of the most notable nominees for Best Screenplay for the 2026 award season and why. 

Hamnet– dir. Cholé Zhao, screenplay by Zhao and Maggie O’Farrell 

This film is an adaptation of O’Farrell’s 2020 novel of the same title, which stars Jessie Buckley as Agnes Hathaway, known historically as Anne Hathaway, and Paul Mescal as Will Shakespeare. The story focuses on Agnes and Will as they deal with the grief over the death of their son Hament, played by Jacobi Jupe. Hamnet’s death is said to be one of the main influences on Shakespeare’s writing of his most famous tragedy, Hamlet. This drama has won the People’s Choice Award at the Toronto Film Festival and has racked up six Golden Globe nominations, with one in Best Screenplay. The film has been described as deeply humanizing as it “strips away the myth of ‘The Bard’ to tell a deeply intimate, emotional story about a mother, a father, and the devastating cost of their son’s life and death.” 

It Was Just An Accident– dir. Jafar Panahi, screenplay by Jafar Panahi 

This thriller follows Vahid, played by Vahid Mobasseri, a former Iranian political prisoner who now works as a mechanic, who has a random encounter with a man named Eghbal, played by Ebrahim Azizi, whom Vahid believes is his “sadistic jailhouse captor.” Under pressure, Vahid and a few other former prisoner members kidnap Eghbal and must decide “how far they should take matters into their own hands with their presumed tormentor.” The film has been nominated for six Golden Globes, including one for Best Screenplay, and has won Best Screenplay at both the Gotham Awards and the Los Angeles Film Critics Association Awards. The feature focuses on themes of society and humanity, posing a serious question: “What does true justice look like?” 

Sinners– dir. Ryan Coogler, screenplay by Ryan Coogler 

This film centers on Michael B. Jordan in dual roles as twin criminal brothers, Smoke and Stack, who, in 1932, return to Mississippi to start a juke joint, where they find a supernatural evil right at their front door. The support cast includes Wunmi Moskau as Annie, Smoke’s estranged wife and Hoodoo practitioner, Hailee Steinfeld as Mary, Stack’s ex-girlfriend, Jack O’Connell as Remmick, and Miles Caton as Sammie Moore, Smoke and Stack’s aspiring blues musician cousin. Sinners is a big contender for this year’s award season, earning seventeen nominations for the Critics’ Choice Awards, including Best Screenplay, and seven Golden Globes, also a nomination for Best Screenplay. Coogler’s script “weaves together several rich and complex thematic threads rooted in Black culture, identity, and the spiritual traditions of the Mississippi Delta.” 

Wicked: For Good– dir. Jon M. Chu, screenplay by Winnie Holzman and Dana Fox 

This adaptation of the iconic Broadway musical explores the fallout of the events of the first film, with Elphaba, played by Cynthia Erivo, now living in the woods outside Oz and using her time to stop construction of the Yellow Brick Road. While Glinda, played by Ariana Grande, now a popular figure in Oz, prepares for her wedding to Fiyero, played by Jonthan Bailey, who leads the charge in capturing the Wicked Witch of the West. The musical has grossed approximately $469.2 million globally since its release on November 17th. The film has been nominated for five Golden Globe Awards and seven Critics’ Choice Awards, with the script shining a light on the “unbreakable connection” between Elphaba and Glinda, who both have “realized just how much their friendship has altered the course of their lives” as they are forced to part. 

All of these films’ screenplays shine in different ways, some with grief, others with horror, but the one thing they have in common is that they are rooted in humanity, in all its deeply messy, profound glory.