Scott Frank to Receive the WGA East’s Ian McLellan Hunter Award for Career Achievement at 2025 Writers Guild Awards

NEW YORK, NY  (December 11, 2024) – Scott Frank will be honored with the Writers Guild of America East’s Ian McLellan Hunter Award for Career Achievement at the 77th Annual Writers Guild Awards at New York’s Edison Ballroom on Saturday, February 15, 2025.

Frank, who marks his 40^th year as a WGA member in 2025, has had an extraordinary career screenwriting, directing and producing for both film and television.

With five Writers Guild Award nominations under his belt, Frank won “Best Adapted Screenplay” for OUT OF SIGHT (1998) and “Best Adapted Longform Screenplay” for THE QUEEN’S GAMBIT (2020). OUT OF SIGHT, a multi-layered heist film that helped pioneer a new texture for the genre, was also nominated for “Best Adapted Screenplay” at the Academy Awards.

Most recently, Frank joined Tom Fontana (OZ, HOMICIDE, THE JURY) as co-creators, writers and executive producers on mini-series MONSIEUR SPADE. MONSIEUR SPADE centers around retired detective Sam Spade, the infamous protagonist of Dashiell Hammett’s 1930 classic novel The Maltese Falcon, who returns to the action after a murder shocks a small town in the South of France.

Frank’s screenwriting credits further include masterful adaptations of Elmore Leonard novel GET SHORTY, Philip K. Dick novella MINORITY REPORT, John Grogan memoir MARLEY & ME and Marvel comic book stories THE WOLVERINE and LOGAN.  LOGAN earned Frank his second Academy Award nomination for “Best Adapted Screenplay.”

Frank began his career as a writer on the series THE WONDER YEARS and his early film credits include the Kenneth Branagh directed thrilled DEAD AGAIN and the Jodie Foster directed coming-of-age drama LITTLE MAN TATE.

Lisa Takeuchi Cullen, President of the Writers Guild of America East, said, “Scott Frank is a brilliant screenwriter who has given us some of the most iconic movies and TV series over his varied career. He is also a devoted Guild member, and we are thrilled to honor him with the Hunter Award for Career Achievement.”

The Hunter Award was established in 1992 and named in memory of longtime WGAE member Ian McLellan Hunter. The award is presented to a WGAE member in honor of their body of work as a writer in motion pictures or television. Past recipients include Tony Gilroy, Spike Lee, Richard Price, Tom Fontana, Geoffrey Ward, Andrew Bergman, John Sayles, Ruth Prawer Jhabvala, John Waters, Richard LaGravenese, Nora Ephron, Walter Bernstein, and Claire Labine.

For more information about the 2025 Writers Guild Awards submission process, guidelines and official entry forms, please visit www.wgaeast.org or www.wga.org.

For media inquiries about the 2025 WGA New York show, please contact Jason Gordon in the WGAE Communications Department at (212) 767-7809 or email: jgordon@wgaeast.org.

For media inquiries about the 2025 WGA Los Angeles show, please contact Bob Hopkinson in the WGAW Communications Department at: (310) 801-8563 or email: bhopkinson@wga.org.

The Writers Guild of America East (WGAE) and the Writers Guild of America West (WGAW) are labor unions of writers in motion pictures, television, news, podcasts and online media. The Guilds negotiate and administer contracts that protect the creative and economic rights of their members; conduct programs, seminars, and events on issues of interest to writers; and present writers’ views to various bodies of government. For more information on the Writers Guild of America East, visit wgaeast.org. For more information on the Writers Guild of America West, visit wga.org.

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