If you watched this year’s Oscars ceremony, you may have noticed a film kept getting mentioned that wasn’t part of the festivities – “Black Panther.” The Marvel Studios film is blowing up the box office, with over $900 million worldwide, as of this writing, and doesn’t look to be stopping anytime soon. While the money has been a huge story, the near unanimous critical-acclaim and fan reaction has a lot of people talking about potential Oscar noms in the future.
One such person talking about “Black Panther’s” Oscars future is none other than director Christopher Nolan. No stranger to superheroes, Nolan’s great superhero epic, “The Dark Knight” became one of the driving factors for expanding the Best Picture category to include more films, after its perceived “snub” back in 2009. Mentioned in Deadline’s Oscars wrap-up, Nolan gave his support for “Black Panther” to be included into the Oscars race next year. While there was no quote, Deadline says, “[Nolan] predicted Black Panther will be among the Best Picture nominees in 2019.”
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Deadline backs up his statements by mentioning that Disney has already been talking about how they’ll be pushing hard for “Black Panther” to be represented at next year’s awards, with the outlet saying they’ve heard first-hand from a Disney executive that this is the case. Also mentioned as a potential Disney awards-contender is the upcoming “Mary Poppins Returns,” which stars actress Emily Blunt.
If “Black Panther” were to be nominated next year, it would be a massive accomplishment. No superhero film has ever been included in the Best Picture category. This year, however, “Logan” was able to break out of the technical awards basement that most superhero films find themselves in, and land itself a Best Adapted Screenplay nomination. While it didn’t win, many people thought this was a sign that superhero films could eventually breakthrough into the major awards contention.
There was also talk about “Wonder Woman” being an outside contender at a big-time nomination, but alas, that never panned out. However, not even “Logan” or “Wonder Woman” is riding the high that “Black Panther” is riding, currently. It looks like if there was ever a time this could happen, “Black Panther” could be that movie.
Perhaps, next February, the Academy will say, “Wakanda forever!”