WGA Awards: Ryan Coogler’s “Sinners” and Paul Thomas Anderson’s “One Battle After Another” Keep Oscar Race Tight

The 2026 Writers Guild Awards were held on Sunday night in New York, and the two films locked in what appears to be a dead heat for Best Picture at the Oscars shared a pair of guild awards. Ryan Coogler’s original script for Sinners took home the award for best original screenplay, with star Miles Caton accepting on his behalf. Paul Thomas Anderson’s One Battle After Another nabbed the award for Best Adapted Screenplay, with Shayna McHayle, who plays Junglepussy in the film, accepting on his behalf.

The nominees in the Writers Guild Awards Adapted Screenplay category featured the very same nominees that we’ll be seeing next Sunday at the Oscars.

On the TV side of the ledger, The Pitt won a trio of awards: best drama series, best new series, and best episodic drama. The Studio won for best comedy series, and The Righteous Gemstones won for best episodic comedy. The Michelle Williams-led Dying for Sex won in the Limited Series category.

The hilarious Roy Wood hosted the event, which comes amid turmoil at the Guild, with the East Coast ceremony happening while the WGA West is currently striking. Wood joked that because, unlike the BAFTAS, which have money, there was no possibility of anyone saying anything into a table microphone and upsetting the flow of the awards, as happened at the BAFTAS. “Tourette’s or not, if you plan on yelling a slur at the stage tonight, please stand up and project,” Wood said. 

Describing his own career in late-night TV, going from The Daily Show to CNN, he said he could describe it as “one battle after another.”

Wood ended on a hopeful note, however.

“I urge all of you to continue to make original content that challenges the human mind and pushes back on conventional ideals because our government understands one thing clearly: If you control what people see, then you control how the country sees itself. And if you can do that, you don’t even need to rig an election,” he said. “So the journalists, the writers, the entertainers in this room, just know that we’re ground zero. We’re fighting the fight. We’re going to keep telling the truth and keep pushing.”