In addition to a Best Picture nomination, Black Panther scored six other nods at this morning’s Academy Award nomination announcement.
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The seven nominations mark the most nominations for a comic book adaptation since The Dark Knight, which received eight nominations and was the first comic book movie to win an Oscar in an “above the line” (highly visible) category. In addition to its famous Best Supporting Actor win, The Dark Knight brought home the trophy for Best Sound Editing, a category in which Black Panther is also nominated.
Black Panther scored its Best Picture nomination as well as accolades for Best Costume Design, Best Sound Mixing, Best Sound Editing, Best Original Score, Best Production Design, and Best Original Song (for “All The Stars”).
Black Panther was one of the most acclaimed and buzzed-about movies in the first half of 2018, making it an odds-on favorite for a Best Picture nomination or even a win for much of the year. In the last few months, as “awards season” movies started to flood the theaters, Black Panther‘s accolades became less of a sure thing, and a lot of the discourse around the movie was boiled down to, “Can it still capture the Academy’s imagination nearly a year later?”
With seven nominations, it seems that it did.
Star Angela Bassett, who plays Ramonda, mother to newly crowned Wakandan king T’Challa (Chadwick Boseman), said the cultural milestone “deserves” the award.
“I think the movie works so brilliantly on so many levels. It’s superhero, Marvel [Cinematic] Universe and all of that, but it connected with historians, it connected with culture, it connected globally, it just reached in and grabbed folks’ hearts and their minds and shattered so many expectations and preconceived notions,” she told Toofab.
The film was the first birthed from the superhero genre to be nominated for highest honors at the Golden Globes, where it competed for Best Picture – Drama.
Marvel Studios president and producer Kevin Feige said at the Globes Black Panther‘s cultural impact and significance is “certainly the most important victory” the Disney-owned studio has ever had.
In July, after the $1.3 billion earned by Black Panther at the worldwide box office helped lead Marvel to a record-setting $17 billion in lifetime totals, Feige told Vox he hoped to see its talent recognized but admitted the genre is typically overlooked outside of technical categories.
“I think there are a lot of amazing artists that helped to make that movie, and it would be wonderful if they could be recognized. Almost everyone involved in that movie, bringing that movie together, is great, and it would be wonderful to see if they’re recognized. We’ll see. This genre, typically not,” Feige said.
Prior to Black Panther, Marvel Studios had earned eight nominations for Best Visual Effects, including nominations for 2012’s The Avengers and 2017’s Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2, and nominations for Best Sound Editing (2008’s Iron Man) and Best Makeup and Hairstyling (2014’s Guardians of the Galaxy).
“Maybe it’s easy to dismiss VFX or flying people or spaceships or billion dollar grosses. I think it is easy to say that you have already been awarded in a certain way,” Feige said in June of Marvel’s lack of awards recognition.
Captain Marvel opens March 8, followed by Avengers: Endgame April 26 and Spider-Man: Far From Home July 5.
