| Year | Film | Writer | |
|---|
| 2009 |
| Milk | Dustin Lance Black | |
| 2008 |
| Juno | Diablo Cody | |
| 2007 |
| Little Miss Sunshine | Michael Arndt | |
| 2006 |
| Crash | Paul Haggis and Bobby Moresco | |
| 2005 |
| Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind | Pierre Bismuth, Michel Gondry and Charlie Kaufman | |
| 2004 |
| Lost in Translation | Sofia Coppola | |
| 2003 |
| Talk to Her | Pedro Almodovar | |
| 2002 |
| Gosford Park | Julian Fellowes | |
| 2001 |
| Almost Famous | Cameron Crowe | |
| 2000 |
| American Beauty | Alan Ball | |
| 1999 |
| Shakespeare in Love | Marc Norman and Tom Stoppard | |
| 1998 |
| Good Will Hunting | Ben Affleck and Matt Damon | |
| 1997 |
| Fargo | Ethan and Joel Coen | |
| 1996 |
| The Usual Suspects | Christopher McQuarrie | |
| 1995 |
| Pulp Fiction | Quentin Tarantino and Roger Avary | |
| 1994 |
| The Piano | Jane Campion | |
| 1993 |
| The Crying Game | Neil Jordan | |
| 1992 |
| Thelma and Louise | Callie Khouri | |
| 1991 |
| Ghost | Bruce Joel Rubin | |
| 1990 |
| Dead Poets Society | Tom Schulman | |
| 1989 |
| Rain Man | Ronald Bass and Barry Morrow | |
| 1988 |
| Moonstruck | John Patrick Shanley | |
| 1987 |
| Hannah and Her Sisters | Woody Allen | |
| 1986 |
| Witness | William Kelley, Pamela Wallace and Earl Wallace | |
| 1985 |
| Places in the Heart | Robert Benton | |
| 1984 |
| Tender Mercies | Horton Foote | |
| 1983 |
| Gandhi | John Briley | |
| 1982 |
| Chariots of Fire | Colin Welland | |
| 1981 |
| Melvin and Howard | Bo Goldman | |
| 1980 |
| Breaking Away | Steve Tesich | |
| 1979 |
| Coming Home | Robert C. Jones, Waldo Salt and Nancy Dowd | |
| 1978 |
| Annie Hall | Woody Allen and Marshall Brickman | |
| 1977 |
| Network | Paddy Chayefsky | |
| 1976 |
| Dog Day Afternoon | Frank Pierson | |
| 1975 |
| Chinatown | Robert Towne | |
| 1974 |
| The Sting | David S. Ward | |
| 1973 |
| The Candidate | Jeremy Larner | |
| 1972 |
| The Hospital | Paddy Chayefsky | |
| 1971 |
| Patton | Francis Ford Coppola and Edmund H. North | |
| 1970 |
| Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid | William Goldman | |
| 1969 |
| The Producers | Mel Brooks | |
| 1968 |
| Guess Who's Coming to Dinner | William Rose | |
| 1967 |
| A Man and a Woman | Claude Lelouch and Pierre Uytterhoeven | |
| 1966 |
| Darling | Frederic Raphael | |
| 1965 |
| Father Goose | Peter Stone and Frank Tarloff | |
| 1964 |
| How the West Was Won | James Webb | |
| 1963 |
| Divorce, Italian Style | Ennio de Concini, Pietro Germi and Alfredo Giannetti | |
| 1962 |
| Splendor in the Grass | William Inge | |
| 1961 |
| The Apartment | I.A.L. Diamond and Billy Wilder | |
| 1960 |
| Pillow Talk | Clarence Greene, Maurice Richlin, Russell Rouse and Stanley Shapiro | |
| 1959 |
| The Defiant Ones | Nathan E. Douglas and Harold Jacob Smith | |
| 1958 |
| Designing Woman | George Wells | |
| 1957 |
| The Red Balloon | Albert Lamorisse | |
| 1956 |
| Interrupted Melody | Sonya Levien and William Ludwig | |
| 1955 |
| On the Waterfront | Budd Schulberg | |
| 1954 |
| Titanic | Charles Brackett, Richard Breen and Walter Reisch | |
| 1953 |
| The Lavender Hill Mob | T.E.B. Clarke | |
| 1952 |
| An American in Paris | Alan Jay Lerner | |
| 1951 |
| Sunset Boulevard | Charles Brackett, D.M. Marshman, Jr. and Billy Wilder | |
| 1950 |
| Battleground | Robert Pirosh | |
| 1949 |
| No Award Given | - | |
| 1948 |
| The Bachelor and the Bobby-Soxer | Sidney Sheldon | |
| 1947 |
| The Seventh Veil | Muriel Box and Sydney Box | |
| 1946 |
| Marie-Louise | Richard Schweizer | |
| 1945 |
| Wilson | Lamar Trotti | |
| 1944 |
| Princess O'Rourke | Norman Krasna | |
| 1943 |
| Woman of the Year | Michael Kanin and Ring Lardner Jr | |
| 1942 |
| Citizen Kane | Herman Mankiewicz and Orson Welles | |
| 1941 |
| The Great McGinty | Preston Sturges | |