BRYAN FOGEL

This image released by Amazon Studios shows Sacha Baron Cohen in a scene from "Borat Subsequent Moviefilm." (Amazon Studios via AP)NEW YORK – Sacha Baron Cohen's “Borat Subsequent Moviefilm” was partly improvised and scripted by nine writers, but it still walked away Sunday night with one of the Writers Guild Awards' top honors, best adapted screenplay. Best original screenplay went to the script for the feminist revenge thriller “Promising Young Woman,” by writer-director Emerald Fennell. “Thank you for this incredible award, though I can’t help thinking we won it because 60% of the Writers Guild worked on this movie,” said Baron Cohen. The guild's awards came after the conclusion of a two-year battle with talent agencies over potential conflicts of interest as representatives of film and TV writers.

The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences on Wednesday unveiled its shortlists for several categories, including documentary feature, international feature, original song, original score, visual effects and makeup and hairstyling. Titles as diverse as “Tenet” (for score and visual effects), “Borat Subsequent Moviefilm” (for the original song “Wuhan Flu”), “Eurovision Song Contest” (for song) and “Jingle Jangle: A Christmas Story” (for score, song and makeup) are in the initial mix. The Korean American film “Minari," which was controversially nominated for a foreign language Golden Globe, was not eligible in the same category for the Oscars. Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross could find themselves double nominees, as both “Soul” and “Mank” were shortlisted for original score. Winners will be announced at the 93rd Oscars on Sunday, April 25, which will be telecast live on ABC.

(Photo by Taylor Jewell/Invision/AP, File)NEW YORK – Even before “The Dissident” made its premiere at the Sundance Film Festival, director Bryan Fogel had a sense that his explosive Jamal Khashoggi documentary was going to be a tough sell. The film, available on-demand this week, was one of the most anticipated of last January's Sundance. The audience at Sundance included Hillary Clinton, Alec Baldwin and Reed Hastings, the Netflix chief executive. Mohammed denied Saudi Arabia was behind the murder, then eventually granted it was carried out by agents of the Saudi government. “Ultimately, those risk assessments took the place of whether or not their couple hundred million subscribers would like to see this film,” Fogel says.

Set to be released on January 8, the movie documents the murder of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi. His certainty that Jamal Khashoggi was murdered: "The murder of Jamal was 100 percent, a planned murder. Of course, Saudi Arabia was not anticipating that, but I do believe that they felt that they could get away with it. That the idea was to take him back to Saudi Arabia and something went terribly wrong. I think Turkey's holding Saudi Arabia accountable in this and basically disclosing what happened.