Looking at Awards Daily's USC Scripter preview, something just seems a bit clinical about Sasha Stone's list of predicted nominees.  This is an award that has certainly included curevablls in the mix:  "The Bourne Supremacy," "Friday Night Lights" and "The Door in the Floor" in 2004; "The Shipping News" in 2001; "All the Pretty Horses" and "The House of Mirth" in 2000, etc.  Granted, looking back over the award's match-up with Best Adapted Screenplay at the Oscars, the safe bet is usually to expect the frontrunners to pop up, but there's a wide swath to pick from this year.

Sasha is going with "Atonement," "Charlie Wilson's War," "Into the Wild," "No Country for Old Men," and "There Will Be Blood."  Of course, as Stone points out, the Scripter honors both the screenwriters and the originalauthors of the source material, so it's really hard to expect Ian McEwan, Cormac McCarthy and Upton Sinclair missing from the mix.  I'm not as sold on George Crile and even Jon Krakauer, but it's certainly likely we'll see these scripts show up here and with Oscar.  Still, "The Kite Runner" was such a global hit when it landed on bookshelves and Dennis Lehane ("Gone Baby Gone") is such a celebrated author.  And given the "Bourne" entry in '04, who's to say Tony Gilroy can't slide in yet again for what has widely been considered the best offering in the trilogy?

It's all speculation for now, so we'll have to wait and see.  But the USC Scripter kicks off 2008's continuance of the Oscar season tomorrow, so stay tuned...