American auteurs ruled supreme in the Writers Guild of America awards nominations, released on Friday. Paul Thomas Anderson (The Master), Rian Johnson (Looper) and Wes Anderson (Moonrise Kingdom) are three directors whose scripts for their own movies are in contention in the original screenplay category. They battle Mark Boal's screenplay for Zero Dark Thirty (directed by Kathryn Bigelow) and John Gatin's for Flight (directed by Robert Zemeckis).

In the adapted screenplay field, Argo's Chris Terrio, who adapted the article by Joshuah Bearman, is up against David Magee, who worked with Yann Martel's novel Life of Pi. Tony Kushner is in the running for a Lincoln script which lifts some of a non-fiction book by Doris Kearns Goodwin, as is David O Russell, who adapted Matthew Quick's novel for his hit romcom Silver Linings Playbook. Rounding out the list is the ultimate auteur here, Stephen Chbosky, who directed his own screenplay based on his own novel, The Perks of Being a Wallflower.

In the documentary category, scripts for The Central Park Five, The Invisible War, Mea Maxima Culpa: Silence in the House of God, Searching for Sugar Man, We Are Legion: The Story of the Hacktivists, and West of Memphis were recognised.

The Writers Guild America awards are presented on 17 February at simultaneous ceremonies in Los Angeles and New York.