Films like The King’s Speech, Winter’s Bone, and Toy Story 3 may be basking in awards season praise, but there’s one big Oscar precursor they’ve got no shot at winning: the WGA award. The Writers Guild has never been shy about making popular films ineligible for its screenplay honors — last year, Inglourious Basterds, Up, and A Single Man were among the rejected — but this year, the painfully strict guidelines for the prize have eliminated scads of worthy contenders, most of which were low-budget indies (Blue Valentine), foreign-made (Biutiful, Made in Dagenham), or animated (How to Train Your Dragon), meaning they were unlikely to have fulfilled all of the guild’s jurisdiction requirements. Still: At least the WGA-approved Burlesque has a shot now! [Variety]
