Oscar Roundup 2012: Ineligibility Shades Writer's Guild Nominees, and eventual Oscar Screenplay Nominees

As the field narrows, the Globes announced, SAG announced, the critics lists out, and the Oscar ballots due, the Guild Awards may less and less of an impact of awards season.  The Writer's Guild Awards are one of the least successful precursors, mainly because they rules a good amount of scripts ineligible, and thus prevent a clear indicator of a stronger percentage of nominees.

Let's look at the past two years statistics:

2011

Original Screenplay (WGA on Left, Oscar on Right)

Win Win	The Artist
Bridesmaids	Bridesmaids
50/50	A Separation
Young Adult	Margin Call
Midnight in Paris	Midnight in Paris

Adapted Screenplay

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo	The Ides of March
The Help	Tinker Tailor Solider Spy
Moneyball	Moneyball
The Descendants	The Descendants
Hugo	Hugo

In 2011 only 2 films matched in the Original Screenplay category, and three within the Adapted category, most of the discrepancies came because of ineligibility.  This ineligibility problem has happened year after year, and proves to make predicting these categories challenging.

2010

Original Screenplay

Black Swan	The King’s Speech
Please Give	Another Year
Inception	Inception
The Kids are all Right	The Kids are all Right
The Fighter	The Fighter

Adapted Screenplay

I Love You Phillip Morris	Winter’s Bone
The Town	Toy Story 3
The Social Network	The Social Network
127 Hours	127 Hours
True Grit	True Grit

2001

 Original Screenplay

Moulin Rouge	Memento
The Man who Wasn’t There	Amelie
Gosford Park	Gosford Park
Monster’s Ball	Monster’s Ball
The Royal Tenenbaums	The Royal Tenenbaums

Adapted Screenplay

Black Hawk Down	Shrek
Bridget Jone’s Diary	In the Bedroom
A Beautiful Mind	A Beautiful Mind
Ghost World	Ghost World
Lord of the Rings: Fellowship of the Ring	Lord of the Rings: Fellowship of the Ring

Looking at 2010, and 2001 both years seem to follow that strong pattern that only 3 out of 5 nominees make it to the Academy Awards, so what films are the likely nominees this year?
WGA Original Screenplay Nominees

Zero Dark Thirty

Moonrise Kingdom

Looper

Flight

The Master

Strong Ineligible Contenders
Django Unchained
Amour
The Intouchables
The Impossible
Middle of Nowhere

Look for these to be the top five at the WGA, but come Oscar time Looper either Flight or The Master will be replaced with Amour, and Django Unchained. The Oscars typically have a foreign language 

nominee in this category, and they are not going to ignore this aspect of Django.

WGA Adapted Screenplay Nominees
Lincoln
Argo
Silver Linings Playbook
Life of Pi
The Perks of Being a Wallflower

Strong Ineligible Contenders
Beasts of the Southern Wild
The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel
The Deep Blue Sea
Les Miserables 
Rust and Bone

Look for Perks to be the unfortunate casualty here, being replaced by Beasts of the Southern Wild.  Fans of this film will want Benh Zeitlin to get some major attention, and unfortunately this is the most realistic place for him to be nominated.  This is going to be the first time in 4 years most of the nominees line-up.