30 Best Screenplays of All Time, Ranked (original) (raw)
Updated Sep 25, 2024, 10:40 PM EDT
Jeremy has more than 2500 published articles on Collider to his name, and has been writing for the site since February 2022. He's an omnivore when it comes to his movie-watching diet, so will gladly watch and write about almost anything, from old Godzilla films to gangster flicks to samurai movies to classic musicals to the French New Wave to the MCU... well, maybe not the Disney+ shows.
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Few roles within the filmmaking process are as important as writing a movie's script. It's probably not even outrageous to say it is the most important, given that actors, directors, and everyone else involved with making a film need a great screenplay if they're to excel at their job. It's rare to see a movie with creative visuals or great performances without an initial screenplay that's at least solid, meaning that the best scripts out there ought to be celebrated and cherished.
As such, ranking the best screenplays of all time gives you a similar range of titles as you'd see if it came to ranking the best movies of all time; little else is such a strong testament to the necessity of a good screenplay than this observation. The following movies all stand out for being exceptionally well written, and were made possible due to having some of the best screenplays of all time, with them being ranked below in order from fantastic to masterful.
30 'Magnolia' (1999)
Screenwriter: Paul Thomas Anderson
Tom Cruise as Frank TJ Mackey in an interview in 'Magnolia'
Image via New Line Cinema
Magnolia has a screenplay that’s rather immense, though even saying that sounds like an understatement. It’s a movie that unfolds over the course of more than three hours, and features numerous characters going about their lives throughout an eventful day. Some of them know each other, others run into each other, and some people remain strangers throughout the film’s entirety.
It’s the characters and their interactions that make Magnolia fascinating, because everyone has their own story and, as a result, summarizing the film in the traditional sense is tricky. It’s to the credit of Paul Thomas Anderson, who both wrote and directed the movie, that it all comes together at all. Magnolia is a melodrama but a brutally effective and admirably dizzying one, not to mention one of the best films of 1999... and it all began with a massively gutsy and risk-taking original screenplay.
Release Date
December 10, 1999
Runtime
188 minutes
Director
Paul Thomas Anderson
Main Genre
29 'Seven Samurai' (1954)
Screenwriters: Akira Kurosawa, Shinobu Hashimoto, Hideo Oguni
The Seven Samurai stand assembled in one of the film's more iconic moments.
Image via Toho
Given Seven Samurai arguably defined what the action genre could be capable of, it’s worth celebrating its screenplay in particular for helping to establish conventions that proved very influential. Seven Samurai is also structured perfectly, stripping down what makes a good epic movie into three distinct acts (more so than most three-act movies, it has to be said).
In Seven Samurai, there are townspeople tormented by bandits who request the help of seven warriors (act 1), the warriors prepare and train the townspeople for the coming attack (act 2), and then there’s a series of fights when the bandits do attack (act 3). It’s efficiently told, never boring for a second of its very long runtime, and manages to flesh out numerous great characters while making you care about seeing them survive the inevitable violence in the film’s final hour.
Release Date
April 26, 1954
Runtime
207 Minutes
Director
Akira Kurosawa
28 'The Right Stuff' (1983)
Screenwriter: Philip Kaufman
Image via Warner Bros.
Perhaps in a similarly effortless way to something like Seven Samurai, The Right Stuff unfolds at its own pace while covering a ton of ground throughout a film that ends up running for more than three hours. This 1983 historical film is all about the Space Race, exploring it in ways that are awe-inspiring, patriotic, intense, moving, and sometimes also very funny (given that, if you take a step back, the whole situation was a little bit silly at times).
It's to the credit of Tom Wolfe (the source material’s author) and Philip Kaufman (who wrote the adapted screenplay and directed) that all these contrasting tones and options work so well together. The Right Stuff is a masterful balancing act of a movie, as far as the screenplay is concerned… and it doesn’t hurt that it’s also amazingly well-directed, fantastically acted, and contains one of the best scores in cinema history.
Release Date
October 21, 1983
Runtime
193minutes
Director
Chris Long
27 'La Dolce Vita' (1960)
Screenwriters: Federico Fellini, Ennio Flaiano, Tullio Pinelli, Brunello Rondi
Image via Cineriz
La Dolce Vita is a big and intensely episodic movie, and it’s not immediately clear how some of its segments tie together at first. There is a central character – a journalist named Marcello – whose exploits are generally followed more so than anyone else, but his lifestyle sees him drifting around and unable to settle down anywhere. He meets various people, attends numerous parties, and seems to be continually chasing a high he’ll never find.
More so than being about one man, though, La Dolce Vita is also about society, fame, celebrity, religion… almost everything, really. The film’s got the time and ambition to cover a great deal, and it truly does, sometimes being rather serious and also being quite funny at other times. It’s a dense and layered film that gets better on repeated viewings, seeing as the scope of how it’s written is hard to fully get a handle on the first time (and maybe even the second time) around.
Release Date
April 19, 1961
Runtime
174 Minutes
Director
Frederico Fellini
26 'Pan's Labyrinth' (2006)
Screenwriter: Guillermo del Toro
The Pale Man showing off the eyeballs on the palms of his hands in 'Pan's Labyrinth'
Image via Warner Bros.
There are an alarming number of things that Pan’s Labyrinth manages to successfully do within the confines of a movie that clocks in at under two hours. All at once, it’s a brilliant fantasy movie, an intense war film, something that’s equal parts beautiful and nightmarish, and a movie that offers a wide range of emotions, providing catharsis and heartbreak in equal measure.
It’s the film for which Guillermo del Toro will probably be best remembered, and though he’s made other great works both before and since, it’s likely Pan’s Labyrinth will remain his masterpiece. Of course, it’s technically masterful and exceedingly well-acted, but, like just about all movies, its success began with the amazing screenplay which then allowed everything else to fall neatly into place, ultimately ensuring the eventual film was stunning.
25 'Parasite' (2019)
Screenwriters: Bong Joon-ho and Han Jin-won
Cho Yeo-jeong as Choi Yeon-gyo, walking up a staircase looking surprised in 'Parasite'.
Image via NEON
After spending two decades making a series of films that were largely great, 2019 saw Bong Joon-ho write his best film yet: Parasite (with co-writer Han Jin-won). Bong Joon-ho also co-produced and directed the film, making it clear that it was a project he had a great amount of passion for, and the end result shows as much.
Parasite's hard to fault from a writing perspective.
It blends comedy, drama, and thriller elements into one perfectly paced screenplay, delivers plenty of social commentary, and has a cast filled with interesting characters. It deservedly won an Oscar for Best Original Screenplay, with its script being one of the best in recent memory. If there's one key reason why Parasite is a borderline perfect movie, it's the writing, because that's the foundation upon which the perfect direction and perfect performances can exist.
Release Date
May 30, 2019
Runtime
133 minutes
Director
Screenwriter: Aaron Sorkin
Eduardo Saverin (Andrew Garfield) looking to Mark Zuckerberg (Jesse Eisenberg) in The Social Network
Image via Sony Pictures Releasing
Going from an amazingly written movie at the end of the 2010s to one of the best of the early 2010s, The Social Network is certainly the best feature film screenplay Aaron Sorkin's written. It's far more than just a movie about the formation of Facebook, emerging as a complex 21st-century tragedy (in a way) about betrayal, greed, and high-stakes legal disputes.
It's a story that could've been presented in a very dry, by-the-numbers way, yet Sorkin - adapting a non-fiction book by author Ben Mezrich - keeps things fast-paced, exciting, and dynamic. The dialogue is what truly makes The Social Network soar, and when it's coupled with the performances, music, and cinematography, it all makes for one of the best films of its decade.
Release Date
October 1, 2010
Runtime
121 minutes
Director
23 'Do the Right Thing' (1989)
Screenwriter: Spike Lee
Giancarlo Esposito as Buggin' Out and Bill Nunn as Radio Raheem in Do the Right Thing
Image via Universal Pictures
Spike Lee is credited as the sole writer, director, and producer of Do the Right Thing, and he also stars as its main character. Since it's one of the best movies of 1989, it's a given that Lee nailed his four roles as far as this movie's concerned, with all the pieces of Do the Right Thing fitting perfectly in place, ensuring it's aged remarkably well.
It only runs for two hours, yet explores numerous issues surrounding race and prejudice in that time while also having a large cast of characters, all of whom get progressively more stressed and/or angry as the tension-filled narrative progresses. It's all incredibly well-balanced, and arguably stands as Lee's best screenplay to date, being the basis for a movie that's also fantastic in all other areas of its overall execution.
Release Date
June 14, 1989
Runtime
120 minutes
Director
22 'The Shawshank Redemption' (1994)
Screenwriter: Frank Darabont
Andy Dufresne and Ellis Boyd "Red" Redding sit while in prison uniforms in The Shawshank Redemption.
Image via Columbia Pictures
A movie's going to have a difficult time standing out if it's released in a year as strong as 1994, but The Shawshank Redemption has endured as one of the greatest of not just its year, but the entire decade. It's a bittersweet and life-affirming movie about finding hope and friendship in the darkest of places, here being the brutal maximum-security Shawshank prison.
As well as directing the film, Frank Darabont also wrote the screenplay, basing it on a Stephen King novella called Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption. King's stories often (but not necessarily always) result in great scripts/films, with The Shawshank Redemption's hard-to-fault screenplay ensuring it's one of the best Stephen King movie adaptations of all time.
Release Date
September 23, 1994
Runtime
142 minutes
Director
Frank Darabont
Main Genre
21 'Thelma & Louise' (1991)
Screenwriter: Callie Khouri
Thelma and Louise taking a selfie together in 'Thelma and Louise'
Image via MGM
Thelma & Louise is an iconic road movie/thriller/drama film that builds up to one of the most famous endings of all time. It's not just about the destination, though, because the journey here is also engrossing, following two women who go on the run after killing a man in self-defense, bonding as they travel while at large from the law.
Its Oscar-winning screenplay was written by Callie Khouri, whose best-known work besides Thelma & Louise would be creating the TV show Nashville, which ran for 124 episodes between 2012 and 2018. For breathing new life into the road movie genre and being a great character study for its two titular protagonists, Thelma & Louise is a well-written classic, and also benefits from Ridley Scott's overall direction, with this being one of his very best films.
Release Date
May 24, 1991
Runtime
130 Minutes
Director