What's Next: Best Original & Adapted Screenplay

Since we've already talked about all the actors and actresses nominated for this year's Academy Awards, lets head into the people working behind the camera and what they'll be working on next. Some of them are kind of obvious, since Christopher Nolan is obviously finishing up rewrites on The Dark Knight Rises. What we did not know until just recently, and regard this as merely a possibility at the moment, is that he might be working on his own Howard Hughes biopic after he wraps up his superhero trilogy. Plenty of people have already suggested that he go all meta with it and cast Leonardo DiCaprio as Howard Hughes. I know I'd certainly be on board for that.

Another Year writer Mike Leigh doesn't have anything lined up yet, so while were waiting you might want to actually see the film he's nominated for. None of the writers of The Fighter have anything in the works yet, so there's no point in mentioning all their names. For that matter, Lisa Cholodenko (The Kids Are All Right), David Seidler (The King's Speech), Debra Granik (Winter's Bone), and Joel & Ethan Coen (True Grit) have nothing slated for next year. This is a field that doesn't really demand that you get back to work immediately, so there's bound to be a few people taking a break.

Simon Beaufoy is breaking off of his alliance with Danny Boyle for a bit so he can work on Salmon Fishing in the Yemen. After working on Toy Story 3, Michael Arndt is taking on Rock of Ages for director Adam Shankman. The director has never made anything truly great, but I trust the integrity of the writer to bring us something worthwhile. Finally, and this is the one people are going to want to hear about, Aaron Sorkin did some revisions on the screenplay for this year's Moneyball, starring Brad Pitt and Jonah Hill, so that will definitely be on our radar. He also bought the rights to The Politician, a book about John Edwards, with hopes of writing and directing it himself for his directorial debut.