Best Adapted Screenplay Oscar Contenders

Editor's Note: Yesterday we tackled the Original Screenplay category. Which means today it's all about the Adapted Screenplay Oscar competition. Enjoy!

This year, just like every other, an adaptation has a good chance of winning Best Picture. Since 1929, fifty-eight of the overall winners have been adaptations, so the Oscar for Best Screenplay Adaptation is a big indicator of how it'll all end up. And this is a particularly good year.

At the risk of pissing off -- well, all of you -- even though I liked The Dark Knight, a lot, it wasn't the script that made it stand out; it was the acting, the imagery, but most of all the whole spectacle of the thing. Some of the hero lines, especially grumbled in Bale's Batman voice, weren't that much better than the last five Batmans. The Academy's bound to recognize Dark Knight, and not just in "Best Effects" or whatever. But screenplay is a long shot.

I have a soft spot for the adaptation of Chuck Palahniuk's Choke, but let's face it, that's going nowhere. (I just don't see the Academy rewarding a movie about a sex-addicted historic reenactor.) But David Fincher, whose Fight Club was also a Palahniuk adaptation, has another movie in the works: The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, from the F. Scott Fitzgerald story, starring Brad Pitt as a man who's born an 80-year-old and ages backwards. It was adapted by Eric Roth, who already has an Oscar for adapting Forrest Gump. Throw in Cate Blanchett, Julia Ormond, and Tilda Swinton, and this reeks of Oscar bait, but it may get lost in the logjam of Academy fodder in December.

In Frost/Nixon, Ron Howard brings the stage play to the screen, with the playwright doing the adaptation. The Academy loves them some Ron Howard, and the play, about what happened when the disgraced president agreed to appear on a TV talk show for the first time since resigning, was a huge smash. It's a political year and everybody hates Nixon, so look for this to at least get nominated.

Robert Downey Jr. is having a huge year, and all his Iron Man/Tropic Thunder attention is only going to help The Soloist. Based on reporter Steve Lopez's L.A. Times columns, it follows a homeless schizophrenic violin virtuoso on L.A.'s Skid Row. (Hmm, sounds a bit like those movies Downey was making fun of in Tropic Thunder, doesn't it?) Oh, and Jamie Foxx plays the violinist. Remember last time he played a real person?

My personal pick is Revolutionary Road, which reunites Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet for the first time since Titanic. (Oh, and Kathy Bates, too. Sweet.) More important, it's based on Richard Yates's amazing novel about a married couple watching their dreams die in the stifling suburbs. Bleak and scary real, the book was adapted by a Booker Prize-nominated novelist, and it's being directed by the guy who won an Oscar for American Beauty. Not exactly the feel-good hit of the holiday season, but my fingers are crossed for this to be really, really good.

But the hands-down favorite has to be The Road, adapted from Cormac McCarthy's Pulitzer-winning (and Oprah-approved) post-apocalyptic novel. Starring Viggo Mortensen, Robert Duvall, and Charlize Theron, this is definitely this year's No Country for Old Men (that was based on a McCarthy novel, too). Possibly the first Best Picture winner to feature cannibals? Hold on, I have to look that one up.

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