USC Scripter Awards Winners: ‘One Battle After Another’ Wins for Film, ‘Death by Lightning’ Takes Home TV Prize

Paul Thomas Anderson‘s “One Battle After Another” won outstanding film adaptation and “Death by Lightning” took the episodic series prize at the 2026 USC Libraries Scripter Awards.

Anderson accepted his award virtually for adapting Thomas Pynchon’s novel “Vineland,” sharing the honor with the notoriously reclusive author. “I’m sorry that I can’t be there. I have a terrific excuse that I think everyone will understand is that I am working and writing, which is the only thing that would keep me away,” Anderson said. “I hope you understand, very honored to have this award, and extremely honored to share it with Thomas Pynchon, which is a great sentence to say.”

The win continues a strong awards season run for Anderson’s adaptation, which previously won best adapted screenplay at both the Golden Globes and Critics Choice Awards.

Mike Makowsky won in the episodic series category for adapting Candice Millard’s nonfiction book “Destiny of the Republic: A Tale of Madness, Medicine and the Murder of a President” into the Netflix limited series “Death by Lightning.”

In his acceptance speech, Makowsky recalled discovering Millard’s book about President James Garfield’s assassination eight years ago at a Barnes & Noble buy-two-get-one-free table. “I picked up this book, destiny of the Republic, by Candice Millard, about the assassination of our 20th president, James Garfield, who I want to say I knew had been assassinated,” he said. “But I knew very little color or really anything about the man.”

After reading the book in one sitting, Makowsky immediately wanted to adapt it but faced skepticism from Hollywood. “I called up my agent. I was like, I want to write a limited series about our 20th president, James Garfield. I’m no longer repped at CAA,” he joked. “The amount of looks that I got from not only my own reps, but pretty much every executive in town when I told them that I wanted to write this thing, like, good luck buddy and no thanks.”

The writer credited Netflix and his producers, including David Benioff and D.B. Weiss, for believing in the project. “There was only one universe, one select weird group of people who could have ever gotten this thing made,” he said.

This year’s film nominations also included Guillermo del Toro’s “Frankenstein,” Chloe Zhao and Maggie O’Farrell’s “Hamnet,” Ira Sachs’ “Peter Hujar’s Day” and Clint Bentley and Greg Kwedar’s “Train Dreams.” On the TV side, fellow nominees were “Dark Winds,” “Department Q,” “Slow Horses” and “Wolf Hall: The Mirror and the Light.”

The ceremony, held at USC’s Town and Gown, also honored crime novelist Michael Connelly with the Scripter Literary Achievement Award. Actor Titus Welliver, who has portrayed Connelly’s iconic detective Harry Bosch since 2014, presented the award.

The evening opened with an unexpected moment of acknowledgment from USC trustee and Scripter co-founder Glenn Sonnenberg, who recognized the death of 37-year-old nurse Alex Jeffrey Pretti. “It would be wrong to start today, with all that we’ve been reading in the news and where our minds and hearts are, without acknowledging [his death],” Sonnenberg said. “I say this not as a political statement, but to recognize that film lifts us and yet art also reminds us of the world in which we live and the challenging times within which we live.”

Outgoing Scripter selection committee chair Howard Rodman, who has led the jury for more than a decade, delivered his final remarks at the ceremony. “We’re here tonight to celebrate the art of adaptation. How can you turn a book into a movie, a show, a series? Short answer you can’t. Longer answer you can’t,” he said. “Turning a book into a series is devilish. It’s tricky.”

Considered a strong indicator for the best adapted screenplay category at the Oscars, past Scripter winners that went on to win at the Academy Awards include “12 Years a Slave” (2013), “The Imitation Game” (2014), “The Big Short” (2015), “Moonlight” (2016), “Call Me by Your Name” (2017), “Nomadland” (2020), “Women Talking” (2022) and “American Fiction” (2023).

The USC Scripter Awards, founded in 1988, bring together the worlds of filmmaking and publishing in an academic setting to celebrate the best scripts of the year. The ceremony serves as the USC Libraries’ premier fundraising event, with proceeds supporting student resources and library modernization efforts.