2025 Best Picture Nominee The Nickel Boys Is The First Movie In 22 Years To Achieve A Surprisingly Rare Oscars Feat

Nickel Boys might not be the biggest name among the movies nominated for Best Picture at the 2025 Oscars. But just by being nominated, RaMell Ross’ second feature film has already achieved a feat that only a handful of other movies in Oscars history have managed. It tells the fictional story of Elwood, an African-American who grew up in the Southern United States during the Jim Crow era, and was unjustly sent to the real-life reform school Nickel Academy during his childhood.

Alongside Joslyn Barnes, Ross adapted the movie’s screenplay from the 2019 novel of the same name by double-Pulitzer Prize-winning author Colson Whitehead. In fact, The Nickel Boys was the novel for which Whitehead won his second Pulitzer Prize for fiction. As a result, he and RaMell Ross are achieving something at this year’s Oscars that only one other movie in the 21st century has achieved.

The Nickel Boys Is The 1st Adaptation Of A Pulitzer Prize Winner Since 2003 To Be Nominated For Best Picture

It’s The 2nd Movie To Have Achieved The Feat This Century

Nickel Boys is the first movie for 22 years based on a Pulitzer Prize-winning novel to be nominated for the Best Picture Oscar. It’s extremely rare for a story that receives the top fiction-writing prize in the United States to become an Academy Award nominee as well. The last film to achieve this double feat was Stephen Daldry’s drama The Hours, which was based on Michael Cunningham’s novel of the same name about the life of Virginia Woolf, in 2003. The movie is now synonymous with one of Nicole Kidman’s best performances, which won her the Oscar for Actress in a Leading Role that year.

"There is a brilliance to the visual language that Ross establishes. Through the managing of perspective, we can see the historical vastness of something so painfully individual without losing our sense of either scope." - Alex Harrison - ScreenRant's review of Nickel Boys

It’s a testament to Whitehead’s searing portrayal of Black American history through Elwood’s eyes that his story has now made it to the Oscars. But it’s also reflective of the extraordinary work done by the cast and crew of the movie Nickel Boys that RaMell Ross was able to turn Whitehead’s intimate first-person POV narrative into a brilliantly inventive and profoundly moving cinematic experience.

8 Other Best Picture Nominees Were Adapted From Winners Of The Pulitzer Prize For Fiction

Only 2 Of Those Nominees Won The Oscar

Overall, Nickel Boys becomes the ninth Pulitzer Prize-winning novel to be adapted into a Best Picture nominee at the Academy Awards. In addition to The Hours, the other seven works to have achieved this feat are: Alice Adams, Gone with the Wind, The Grapes of Wrath, The Magnificent Ambersons, All the King's Men, To Kill a Mockingbird, and The Color Purple. Out of this list, only Gone with the Wind and the highly-rated All the King’s Men actually won the Oscar for Best Picture.

Every Pulitzer Prize-Winning Best Picture Nominee	Won The Oscar For Best Picture
Alice Adams (1935)	╳
Gone with the Wind (1939)	✓
The Grapes of Wrath (1940)	╳
The Magnificent Ambersons (1942)	╳
All the King's Men (1949)	✓
To Kill a Mockingbird (1962)	╳
The Color Purple (1985)	╳
The Hours (2002)	╳
Nickel Boys (2024)	?

It’s highly improbable thatNickel Boys will become the first Pulitzer Prize-winning story for 75 years to win Best Picture at this year’s Oscars, but the movie has done well just to be included in the conversation. Whitehead, meanwhile, already has a Golden Globe, an Emmy, a BAFTA and a Peabody Award attached to his name, thanks to Barry Jenkins’ adaptation of his first Pulitzer Prize winner The Underground Railroad. He’s also published two more novels since The Nickel Boys – The Harlem Shuffle and Crook Manifesto – which have yet to be brought to the screen.

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