Inception, Social Network Win WGA Awards

The Sci-fi mystery Inception and the Facebook drama The Social Network won top screenplay honors Saturday night at the Writers Guild of America awards.

Inception writer Christopher Nolan won a Best Original Screenplay and The Social Network writer Aaron Sorkin won in the Adapted Screenplay category, showing they liked Aaron Sorkin’s work over that of 127 Hours screenplay by Danny Boyle and Simon Beaufoy, I Love You Phillip Morris screenplay by John Requa and Glenn Ficarra, The Town screenplay by Peter Craig and Ben Affleck and Aaron Stockard, and True Grit screenplay by Joel Coen and Ethan Coen.

Nolan and Inception beat out Black Swan screenplay by Mark Heyman and Andres Heinz and John McLaughlin; story by Andres Heinz, The Fighter screenplay by Scott Silver and Paul Tamasy and Eric Johnson; story by Keith Dorrington and Paul Tamasy and Eric Johnson, The Kids Are All Right screenplay by Lisa Cholodenko and Stuart Blumberg, and Please Give screenplay by Nicole Holofcener.

Oscar favorite The King’s Speech was not nominated for the award because it didn’t qualify under union rules. Nolan addressed openly from the stage, witty saying that he looked forward to a time when anyone in his winning position in the future could accept the award “without qualification.”

Nolan’s fairly surprising WGA win makes the Academy’s original screenplay competition unusually hard to foresee as the esteem season runs to its Oscars finale. Nolan was formerly nominated for Memento and Leigh has been up for the prize four other times with no award-winning. Stanton has been nominated quite a few times, while Sorkin is a first-time nominee.

Mark Boal won the 2010 WGA Award for original script for The Hurt Locker. Sheldon Turner and Jason Reitman took the honor for adapted script for Up in the Air. Other recent WGA award original script winners were Dustin Lance Black (Milk), Diablo Cody (Juno) and Arndt (Little Miss Sunshine).

Click here for the full Winners List.