‘Black Panther’ Aims for Best Picture, Not “Popular Oscar” Says Chadwick Boseman | THR News - video Dailymotion

The announcement that next year’s Academy Awards will introduce an Oscar for "outstanding achievement in popular film" has raised many questions.

Transcript

00:00The announcement that next year's Academy Awards will introduce an Oscar for

00:07outstanding achievement in popular film has raised many questions. For example,

00:11how exactly will the new award even be defined? Is popularity merely quantifiable by box office

00:17success? Or can it include films that disrupt the status quo, make history, and open up the

00:22conversation about representation and inclusion? Disney and Marvel's groundbreaking Black Panther

00:26checks both of those boxes, but as many have argued, the superhero blockbuster also deserves

00:32a shot at the prestigious Best Picture award. Among those troubled about the situation is the

00:36film's A-list star Chadwick Boseman, who spoke about his concerns on The Hollywood Reporter's

00:41Awards Chatter podcast. In the episode that went live on Wednesday, Boseman explained,

00:56it's for Best Picture, and that's all there is to it.

00:59My son, it is your time.

01:02Boseman feels that the introduction of the popular Oscar category should not deter Academy members

01:06from nominating a popular film in the Best Picture Oscar category. The Academy has confirmed

01:11that films can be nominated in both categories.

01:14A good movie is a good movie, says Boseman, and clearly it doesn't matter how much money a movie

01:20makes in order for it to be a good movie in the minds of Academy members, because if it did,

01:24the movies that get nominated and win, which have tended in recent years to not be blockbusters,

01:28wouldn't get nominated. And if it doesn't matter, it doesn't matter on both sides.

01:32The actor adds, for my money, the only thing that matters is the level of difficulty.

01:37And Black Panther was certainly a difficult movie to create. As Boseman puts it,

01:54it's very much like a period piece, so as far as that's concerned, I dare any movie to try to

02:03compare to the level of difficulty of this one. And the fact that so many people liked it,

02:07if you just say it's merely popular, that's elitist. To read more on this story and to listen

02:12to Scott Feinberg's full conversation with Chadwick Boseman on The Hollywood Reporter's

02:16Awards Shatter podcast, head to THR.com. For The Hollywood Reporter News, I'm Lyndsey Rodrigues.