WGA Awards: ‘Anora’ & ‘Nickel Boys’ Take Top Screenplay Prizes — Updating Live
The 77th annual Writers Guild Awards are being handed out tonight over concurrent ceremonies in Los Angeles and New York, and Deadline is posting the winners live as they are announced. See the winners list below.
The guild’s nominations honoring the year’s best in film, TV, new media, news, radio and promotional writing were revealed January 15 after being postponed twice due to the L.A. wildfires.
At last year’s strike-delayed WGA Awards, the top film prizes for Original Screenplay and Adapted Screenplay to The Holdovers and American Fiction, respectively. The latter already had won the Academy Award for Cord Jefferson, but Justine Triet and Arthur Harari’s Anatomy of a Fall beat Alexander Payne’s Holdovers for the Original Screenplay Oscar. The Writers Guild top TV winners in 2024 were Succession, The Bear Beef and The Last of Us.
RELATED: Deadline’s Read The Screenplay Series 2025
The WGA West and East also are giving special honors to several folks tonight. David Lynch, who died in January, has been named the recipient of the WGA West’s 2025 Laurel Award for Screenwriting Achievement. Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul creator Vince Gilligan is set for the WGAW’s Paddy Chayefsky Laurel Award for Television Writing Achievement, and Nickel Boys screenwriters RaMell Ross and Joslyn Barnes will receive its 2025 Paul Selvin Award.
WGAE will honor Scott Frank with the Ian McLellan Hunter Award for Career Achievement, Bill Lawrence (Herb Sargent Award for Comedy Excellence) and Kathy McGee (Richard B. Jablow Award).
The WGA Awards often exclude several top films due to eligibility rules. If a film is produced outside the WGA collective bargaining agreement or written by a non-union member, it is not eligible for the guild’s awards.
This holds true again this year, which means such awards-season favorites as Golden Globe winner Conclave, Emilia Pérez, I’m Still Here, Inside Out 2, The Room Next Door, Sing Sing and The Wild Robot are out of the Adapted race. Among those ineligible for Original Screenplay are All We Imagine as Light, The Brutalist, Hard Truths, Gotham Awards winner His Three Daughters, I Saw the TV Glow, The Seed of the Sacred Fig, September 5 and The Substance.
Joel Kim Booster is hosting the Los Angeles ceremony from the Beverly Hilton, and Roy Wood Jr. is emceeing the New York show at Edison Ballroom in Manhattan.
Here are the winners so far at the 2025 Writers Guild Awards:
ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY
Anora, Written by Sean Baker; Neon
ADAPTED SCREENPLAY
Nickel Boys, Screenplay by RaMell Ross & Joslyn Barnes, Based on the Book The Nickel Boys by Colson Whitehead; Orion Pictures/Amazon MGM Studios
LIMITED SERIES
The Penguin, Written by Vladimir Cvetko, Breannah Gibson,
Erika L. Johnson, Lauren LeFranc, Corina Maritescu, Megan Martin, John
McCutcheon, Shaye Ogbonna, Nick Towne, Noelle Valdivia, Kira Snyder; HBO | Max
“Welcome to Spiderwick” (The Spiderwick Chronicles), Written by Aron Eli Coleite; Roku Channel
NEWS SCRIPT – REGULARLY SCHEDULED, BULLETIN, OR BREAKING REPORT
“Willie Mays Tribute” (CBS Newspath), Written by Gerald Mazza; CBS News
NEWS SCRIPT – ANALYSIS, FEATURE, OR COMMENTARY
“The Resistance” (60 Minutes), Written by Scott Pelley, Nicole Young, Kristin Steve; CBS News
QUIZ AND AUDIENCE PARTICIPATION
Pop Culture Jeopardy!, Writers Marcus Brown, Buzzy Cohen, Michael Davies, Chip Dornell, John Duarte, Mark Gaberman, Debbie Griffin, Michele Loud, Traci Mack, Amy Ozols, Louis Virtel, Billy Wisse; Amazon Prime
DIGITAL NEWS
“What Is Hamas Thinking Now?”, Written by Akbar Shahid Ahmed; HuffPost
SHORT FORM STREAMING
Die Hart 3: Hart to Kill, Written by Tripper Clancy; Roku Channel
Erik Pedersen contributed to this report.
