Sequels/Spinoffs/Expansions: Original or adapted screenplay?

It's tricky. But here's my thoughts: it's original unless based off of a previously published property. Ergo, if it's a biopic, it's technically based off of real events, but really, every story's based in some way on something that happened. So I stick to published works.

As far as sequels go, I tend to look at it this way: if the same creative force was behind them, I stick 'em in original. For example, James Cameron's Terminator 2 is original because it feels like a continuation of the same original story he concocted. But the successive sequels are adapted because someone else came to the story and built on it.

The King's Speech was an adaptation of a play that was not published, so I look at that as a first draft rather than an original source, which Seidler refined to a screenplay.

10 Cloverfield Lane is original. The Cloverfield moniker is largely a marketing tool added after the fact, and has nothing to do with the 2008 film (if memory serves, it wasn't even pitched as a Cloverfield film and only got the title in post).

Whiplash and Tyrannosaur feel like works-in-progress that had shorts that were, in essence, proofs of concept. They were never intended to be full films, and indeed I think Whiplash had a full script that Chazelle had cherrypicked a scene from to make his short. So I deign them both original, because I don't believe Chazelle or Mullan based the feature films off of the shorts themselves, but rather had more of the story to tell and wanted to make a short-form version before tackling the feature-length one.

Clue was adapted.  Characters already existed in another medium, they just put them in a different scenario. 

a biopic based on an already existing source material is adapted. Hamilton musical was based on a book. He used information from that book and structured a musical. Had he just gone on Wikipedia and said, you know what, I'm going to do a play on Hamilton and researched it himself, then you will be able to label it original. 

Sequels are adapted. They used existing characters and modified the situation. 

As for Whiplash, same thing. The short came first so it is adapted. 

I agree with you on 10 Cloverfield but not with Whiplash and Moonlight. Okay, so Whiplash was first written as a full length  movie, so what, it was realized as a movie after the short. Moonlight was based on an unproduced play, true. Was it copyrighted or was it just some draft somewhere. In addition, that play had to be purchased first and they used that story to create the movie. So I believe due to the fact that it already existed in another medium, they went ahead and labeled it adapted. 

Biopics... nah... Tony's story is public knowledge. It was never dramatized in any medium, so how could it be adapted? 

No, it wasn't. It was Tarell Alvin McCraney.

McCraney worked on the adaptation as well, to the point that you could argue that it's just another writer coming on to do a pass when Jenkins did it. For instance, Bridge of Spies was a Matt Charman script, but then the Coens came on and rewrote it, and they were all credited for it as an original screenplay.

I'm generally cool with sequels being considered adapted. It's using previously established characters, themes, or scenarios. The Cloverfield films complicate this a bit since the films do take place in the same universe and have some connections with one another despite the fact the subsequent films started off as original screenplays, so I'm fine with them being categorized either way although I'd probably place them in Adapted since their connections, however tenuous, to Cloverfield do influence my watching of it (I think 10 Cloverfield Lane would have actually been stronger without that title since its ties to the earlier film make it apparent what is going on outside the cellar). The Kill Bill series is also a notable exception; since they were filmed as a single project from one large screenplay and only split apart in editing, I consider Vol. 2 Original.

As for Whiplash, I'd consider it Original since the short itself was actually an adaptation of 15 pages of an already completed script meant to pitch the film (the Saw guys did a similar thing and I'd also consider that film Original). As for Tyrannosaur, correct me if I'm wrong but I was under the impression the film was an expansion of the short rather than the short being a chopped off piece of a script, so I'd rule that as Adapted.

Having seen Dog Altogether (the source of Tyrannosaur), it is most certainly its own story. Tyrannosaur uses the exact same script, but continues past the point where Dog Altogether ended.

In short, everyone's opinions on this are totally split. So in the future, I suggest an original/adapted thread in the same way we have lead/supporting.