Free Screenplays: 'Arrival' and 'Fences' Among Oscar-Hopeful Screenplays Now Available

The Oscar race continues to heat up, which means more screenplays arriving for free download. First, there was this batch of 20 Oscar-hopeful screenplays, including Loving and Manchester by the Sea; next, five more screenplays, including Jackie and Birth of a Nation, became available. 

Thanks to Paramount Pictures, we now have two new screenplays to add to your weekend reading stack. Make some room on your virtual nightstand because we've got screenplays for the sci-fi breakout hit of the year and the upcoming August Wilson adaptation—from the playwright himself.

Before we get to the screenplay links, let's take a look at the trailers. Here at No Film School, we've already shared stories about how screenwriter Eric Heisserer spent a decade carrying around Ted Chiang's short story Story of Your Life to find producers who believed in his vision of how to bring Arrival to the screen, plus our interview with DP Bradford Young on how he deconstructed sci-fi for this film. Here's the film's trailer to refresh your memory.

Denzel Washington makes his directorial debut with Fences, reprising both his and Viola Davis' Tony award-winning roles from the 2010 Broadway revival of August Wilson's play. The award-winning playwright adapted the play himself for the big screen. In both its original Broadway run and revival, Fences won Tony awards for its lead actors as well as Best Play (Best Revival in 2010), and Wilson's script won the Pulitzer for Best Drama in 1987. Needless to say, this film has "major awards contender" written all over it.

What makes the screenplay for Fences so interesting is that Wilson decided to keep it in stage play format with a few tweaks to allow for scene headers and camera movement. Check out the trailer below.

Our thanks to Paramount Pictures for making these screenplays available for download. Don't wait to download them, though, because we never know when the studio will take them offline.

• Arrival, screenplay by Eric Heisserer, based on the short story Story of Your Life by Ted Chiang
• Fences, screenplay by August Wilson, based on his play

As more screenplays become available, we'll be sure to share them with you.

Source: Paramount Pictures Awards 2016