Get Out has been voted the top screenplay of the century so far.
The award-winning film, written and directed by Jordan Peele, topped a list chosen by the Writers Guild Of America that ranked 101 of the best screenplays of the past 21 years. The horror film also won the 2018 Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay.
Other screenplays that made the top 10 have also been similarly celebrated at the Oscars including Korean feature Parasite, which won Best Picture and Best Original Screenplay in 2020 and Moonlight, which took home Best Picture and Best Adapted Screenplay in 2017.
No female writers made the top 10, with the first screenplay by women ranking at No 12. The honour went to Annie Mumolo and Kristen Wiig for their 2011 film Bridesmaids.
"The very concept of 'writing for the screen' is in existential crisis," an article on the Writers Guild of America website says.
"The studio system has given way to the streaming system, where everything, no matter the source, competes for eyeballs. This ... democratisation of content has also changed a lot of hard-and-fast rules.
"Depth of character, once strictly the province of the drama, or the issue film, is not out of place in a superhero movie or one starring a badly behaving bridesmaid. And formerly individuated genres like sci-fi, horror, comedy, and drama intersect freely, sometimes all in the same screenplay".
The top 10 screenplays of the 21st century by the Writers Guild Of America:
- Get Out (2017), written by Jordan Peele
- Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004), written by Charlie Kaufman, story by Kaufman, Michel Gondry and Pierre Bismuth
- The Social Network (2010), screenplay by Aaron Sorkin, based on the book The Accidental Billionaires by Ben Mezrich
- Parasite (2019), screenplay by Bong Joon Ho and Han Jin Won, story by Bong Joon Ho
- No Country for Old Men (2007), written for the screen by Joel and Ethan Coen, based on the novel by Cormac McCarthy
- Moonlight (2016), screenplay by Barry Jenkins, story by Tarell Alvin McCraney
- There Will Be Blood (2007), screenplay by Paul Thomas Anderson, based on the novel Oil! by Upton Sinclair
- Inglourious Basterds (2009), written by Quentin Tarantino
- Almost Famous (2000), written by Cameron Crowe
- Memento (2000), screenplay by Christopher Nolan, based on the short story by Jonathan Nolan
