Variety's 2026 Screenwriters to Watch Span Bourdain to Austen

Variety unveiled its 10 Screenwriters to Watch for 2026, a class that will be feted at a panel during the Santa Fe International Film Festival. The roster spans an Anthony Bourdain origin story, a Lagos-set "Mrs. Dalloway," and the Netflix reboot of "A Different World," with biopics, literary adaptations and feature debuts dominating the slate.

What anchors the 2026 class?

Biographical work threads through nearly every entry. Todd Bartels and Lou Howe wrote "Tony," which centers on a pivotal Provincetown summer when a young Anthony Bourdain stumbled into a clam-shack dishwashing job that shaped his life. The pair, friends since high school, first collaborated on the 2022 Black List script "Dumb Blonde," a Dolly Parton origin story.

"We knew we liked working together and liked writing a version of a biopic," Howe says. "Our way of working when it comes to biopics was to find a window that serves as a microcosm for the larger journey."

The duo are now developing a Jackie Bouvier–JFK biopic, an MTV-era project, "Murder 101" for Amazon with Jon Watts directing, and Sony's "Metal Gear Solid."

Which writers made debut features?

Three of the 10 are first-time film directors. Aleshea Harris, whose 2018 Off-Broadway premiere "Is God Is" at Soho Rep earned her an Obie, wrote and directed the feature adaptation herself, starring Kara Young, Sterling K. Brown, Janelle Monáe and Vivica A. Fox.

"'Is God Is' changed my life," Harris says. "It changed my life as a play, and it's done this other thing for my life as a movie."

Beth De Araújo, an AFI MFA trained in sociology at Berkeley, wrote "Josephine," a film told entirely from the POV of an 8-year-old. She has set her sights beyond trauma: "I'm going to write something without a sexual assault," she says. Elliot Tuttle, who interned for the Duplass brothers, wrote and directed "Blue Film," released this year by Obscured Releasing.

How are the literary adaptations shaping up?

Chuko Esiri moved Virginia Woolf's "Mrs. Dalloway" to Lagos in "Clarissa," a screenplay he wrote alone while sharing directing duties with his brother Arie. Esiri trained at NYU Tisch while Arie went to Columbia.

"If the world ended today and aliens could only access its history through movies, they'd think Africa was always war-torn," Esiri says. "We wanted to widen the arpeggio."

Diana Reid rewrote Jane Austen's "Sense and Sensibility" — a film starring Esme Creed-Miles and Daisy Edgar-Jones — after her producer persuaded her past initial wariness. "It follows less the conventional romance arc, and more of a coming-of-age story about how two sisters learn from each other," Reid says.

Zoe Kazan, known primarily as an actor, is showrunning Netflix's "East of Eden" adaptation. Her grandfather Elia Kazan directed the 1955 film.

Which project carries the most personal weight?

Rebekah Taussig, a disabled writer whose memoir "Sitting Pretty" caught "CODA" director Siân Heder's eye, co-wrote "Being Heumann" about disability rights icon Judy Heumann. The film includes what she and Heder believe to be among the first intimate love scenes between a disabled woman and non-disabled partner.

"Disabled people have lots of sex," Taussig says. "How have we not seen that?"

Kelly O'Sullivan co-directed "Mouse" with partner Alex Thompson. "And then my mom died in the middle of us making this movie," she says.

Felicia Pride, daughter of an educator, is rebuilding "A Different World" for Netflix with an HBCU Council shaping the writers' room. "Fifty-nine percent of our background is HBCU students," she says.

The 10 will convene at the Santa Fe International Film Festival, with many already at work on follow-ups: Harris's Off-Broadway "Feast of Rabbits," Esiri's "Three Songs" for Film4, and Tuttle's newly completed end-of-the-world ensemble thriller.