Writers Guild Award Nominations Announced: Can 'Looper' Turn Nomination Into Oscar Gold?

The Writers Guild of America announced its nominations for 2012 honors on Friday, highlighting 16 films in the Best Original Screenplay, Best Adapted Screenplay and Best Documentary Screenplay categories.

Rian Johnson's Looper is one of the Best Original Screenplay nominees, adding fuel to the idea that the film could secure an Oscar nomination when the Academy makes its announcements on Thursday.  Looper was one of the most critically successful films of 2012, with many holding the Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Bruce Willis vehicle in the same regard as past science-fiction masterpieces as Terminator and The Matrix. It definitely deserves any nominations and awards it gets.

The Writers Guild Awards hold a lot of weight when it comes to predicting which films will eventually win Screenplay Oscars. In the ten years since the Writers Guild switched to Best Original and Best Adapted categories, the guild's Best Original Screenplay winner also won the Oscar for Best Original Screenplay eight times (Bowling for Columbine and Inception were the exceptions) and the guild's Best Adapted Screenplay winner also won the Oscar for Best Adapted Screenplay seven times (The Hours, American Splendor and Up in the Air were the exceptions). It is worth noting that the Writers Guild strictly enforces its own regulations, leaving films that didn't comply like Django Unchained, Les Miserables and Beasts of the Southern Wild out of consideration.

Head past the jump to see the full list of Writers Guild Awards. Winners will be announced on Feb. 17.

Best Original Screenplay
John Gatins (Flight)
Rian Johnson (Looper)
Paul Thomas Anderson (The Master)
Wes Anderson and Roman Coppola (Moonrise Kingdom)
Mark Boal (Zero Dark Thirty)

Best Adapted Screenplay
Chris Terrio (Argo)
David Magee (Life of Pi)
Tony Kushner (Lincoln)
Stephen Chbosky (The Perks of Being a Wallflower)
David O Russell (Silver Linings Playbook)

Best Documentary Screenplay
Sarah Burns, David McMahon, Ken Burns (The Central Park Five)
Kirby Dick (The Invisible War)
Alex Gibney (Mea Maxima Culpa: Silence in the House of God)
Malik Bendejelloul (Searching for Sugar Man)
Brian Knappenberger (We Are Legion: The Story of the Hacktivisits)
Amy Berg and Billy McMillin (West of Memphis)