USC Scripter nominations include writers for Top Gun: Maverick, Guillermo Del Toro’s Pinocchio, The Crown, and more

USC Libraries announced Wednesday the nominees for the 35th annual USC Libraries Scripter Award, which honors the screenwriters of the year’s best film and episodic series adaptations and the writers of the works on which they are based.

This year’s film nominees are the screenwriters and original writers of Pinocchio by Guillermo del Toro, Alive, She Said, Top Gun: Maverick and women talk. On television, screenwriters were nominated for writing episodes The Crown, Fleishman’s in Trouble, Slow Horses, Tokyo Vice and Under the banner of heaven.

The winners will be announced at a ceremony on March 4 at the Edward L. Doheny Jr. USC Memorial Library, the group’s first in-person giving event since 2020 due to the pandemic.

A total of 101 feature films and 67 TV adaptations made up the field, which was narrowed down to the final lists by a selection committee consisting of screenwriters Eric Roth and Erin Cressida Wilson and writers Walter Mosley and Michael Ondaatje. Former WGA West president and current USC professor Howard Rodman is the 2023 committee chair.

Last year Maggie Gyllenhaal’s adaptation of Elena Ferrante’s novel The Lost Daughter won the Scripters film award, while Danny Strong won on television for an episode of Hulu’s limited series Intoxicated, based on the non-fiction book by Bety Macy. Both writers have each been nominated for an Oscar and an Emmy.

These are this year’s finalists:

MOVIE

Guillermo del Toro, Patrick McHale and Matthew Robbins
Pinocchio by Guillermo del Toro (netflix)
Based on the fairy tale The Adventures of Pinocchio by Carlo Collodi (Penguin Classics)

Kazuo Ishiguro
life (Sony Pictures Classics)
Based on the novella The death of Ivan Ilyich by Leo Tolstoy (Penguin Classics)

Rebecca Lenkiewicz
she said (Universal)
Based on the non-fiction book She said: Break the sexual harassment narrative that helped start a movement by Jodi Kantor and Megan Twohey (Penguin Press)

Peter Craig, Ehren Kruger, Justin Marks, Christopher McQuarrie and Eric Warren
Top Gun: Maverick (decisive)
Based on characters from 1983 California Magazine article “Top Guns” by Ehud Yonay

Sarah Polley and Miriam Toews
women talk (Orion/MGM)
Based on the novel of the same name by Toews (Bloomsbury)

EPISODIC SERIES

Pete Morgan
The crownfor the episode “Pair 31” (Netflix)
Based on his game Public (Dramaturg Play Service Inc.)

Taffy Brodesser Akner
Fleishman is in troublefor the episode “The Liver” (FX)
Based on her book of the same name (Random House)

Will Smith
slow horsesfor the episode “Failure is Contagious” (Apple TV+)
Based on the novel by Mick Herron (Soho Crime)

JT Rogers
Vices of Tokyofor the episode “Yoshino” (HBO Max)
Based on the memoir Tokyo Vice: An American Reporter on Japan’s Police Beat by Jake Adelstein (Doubleday Button)

Dust lance black
Under the banner of heavenfor the episode “When God Was Love” (FX)
Based on the non-fiction book by Jon Krakauer (Anchor Books)