The Top 25 Best Original Screenplay Winners So Far (Updated for 2025)

Moving right along folks! Continuing a tradition I’ve been keen on for years, I’m ranking the new crop of Academy Award winners. For nearly all of the Oscar categories, you’ll see me list the top 25 recipients of that prize. Sometimes, our newest winner will appear. Other times, they’ll be relegated to the Honorable Mention category. Who knows, maybe one or two won’t even make the cut? It’s a list series that I’ll do each and every single year, in the weeks after the ceremony concludes. So, while this is a fun way to think about the Oscars in the aftermath of the latest telecast, it’s also a beginning for another column here on the site. Of course, definitely show us your own lists as well, in the comments section below. We’re definitely keen to know what you think!

As always, I’m making Best Original Screenplay an early ranking. This category has often been very good to film fans, with some real creative cinema emerging victorious. Last year saw Anatomy of a Fall win for Justine Triet and Arthur Harari, with recent winners also including Everything Everywhere All At Once, Belfast, Promising Young Woman, Parasite, Get Out, her, Manchester by the Sea, and Spotlight. This year, it was Sean Baker taking home the gold for Anora. Those of you who pay attention know that I’m often a huge fan of the Original Screenplay winners. In fact, some of the recent ones come in pretty highly here. Read on to find out just where Anora wound up placing, but spoiler alert, it comes in pretty high…

Here now are what I consider to be the 25 best winners of the Best Original Screenplay Oscar, to date:

25. Little Miss Sunshine (Michael Arndt)

24. The Hurt Locker (Mark Boal)

23. Anatomy of a Fall (Justine Triet and Arthur Harari)

22. Dog Day Afternoon (Frank Pierson)

21. Spotlight (Tom McCarthy and Josh Singer)

20. Juno (Diablo Cody)

19. Hannah and her Sisters (Woody Allen)

18. Chinatown (Robert Towne)

17. Everything Everywhere All At Once (The Daniels)

16. On the Waterfront (Budd Schulberg)

15. Manchester by the Sea (Kenneth Lonergan)

14. The Apartment (I. A. L. Diamond and Billy Wilder)

13. Anora (Sean Baker)

12. Network (Paddy Chayefsky)

11. Lost in Translation (Sofia Coppola)

10. Parasite (Bong Joon Ho and Jin Won Han)

9. Good Will Hunting (Ben Affleck and Matt Damon)

8. Citizen Kane (Herman J. Mankiewicz and Orson Welles)

7. Promising Young Woman (Emerald Fennell)

6. Annie Hall (Woody Allen)

5. her (Spike Jonze)

4. The Producers (Mel Brooks)

3. Almost Famous (Cameron Crowe)

2. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (Pierre Bismuth, Michel Gondry, and Charlie Kaufman)

1. Pulp Fiction (Roger Avary and Quentin Tarantino)

Honorable Mention: Belfast (Kenneth Branagh), Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (William Goldman), The Candidate (Jeremy Larner), Dead Poets Society (Tom Schulman), Get Out (Jordan Peele), and Pillow Talk (Clarence Greene, Maurice Richlin, Russell Rouse, and Stanley Shapiro)

Stay tuned for another category later on this week or early next week!