Diablo Cody
"Juno" was runner-up for the Toronto International Film Festival People's Choice Award, won second prize at the Rome Film Festival, and earned four Academy Award nominations, including one for Best Picture. Cody herself won an Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay for her debut script, which also picked up a Golden Globe nomination and an Independent Spirit Award for Best First Screenplay. She also won screenplay honors from BAFTA, the Writers Guild of America, the Broadcast Film Critics Association, the National Board of Review, the Satellite Awards, and the 2008 Cinema for Peace Award for Most Valuable Work of Director, Producer & Screenwriter (which she shared with Jason Reitman, John Malkovich, Mason Novick, Russel Smith and Lianne Halfon).
The Devil's Backbone
Del Toro wrote the first draft before writing his debut film "Cronos". This "very different" version was set in the Mexican Revolution and focused not on a child's ghost but a "Christ with three arms". According to del Toro, and as drawn in his notebooks, there were many iterations of the story, some of which included antagonists who were a "doddering ... old man with a needle," a "desiccated" ghost with black eyes as a caretaker (instead of the living Jacinto who terrorizes the orphans), and "beings who are red from head to foot."