‘Black Panther’ star Chadwick Boseman confirms best picture Oscar campaign

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• “Black Panther” star Chadwick Boseman confirmed to The
  Hollywood Reporter that the movie will campaign for best
  picture at the Oscars, not the new “popular film”
  category.
• “I dare any movie to try to compare to the
  [level of] difficulty of this one,” he told THR.
• The Los Angeles Times recently reported that Marvel
  Studios will launch a serious Oscar campaign for the first time
  to get “Black Panther” nominated, and that Disney has hired a
  veteran Oscars strategist.

There’s no denying that Marvel’s “Black Panther” is a worldwide
phenomenon, but when it comes to the Oscars, Marvel wants the top
prize — best picture — over a “popular film” nomination.

Star Chadwick Boseman, who plays the title character in the
movie, confirmed to The Hollywood Reporter‘s
“Awards Chatter” podcast that the movie will campaign for best
picture rather than the new “achievement in popular
film” category that will be introduced at the 2019 Oscars.

“We don’t know what it [the new prize] is, so I don’t know
whether to be happy about it or not,” Boseman told
THR.
 “What I can say is that there’s no
campaign [that we are mounting] for popular film; like, if
there’s a campaign, it’s for best picture, and that’s all there
is to it.”

The Los Angeles Times recently reported that Marvel Studios
is preparing to launch a serious Oscar campaign for the
first time to get “Black Panther” a best picture nomination.
According to the Times, Disney hired veteran Oscars
strategist Cynthia Swartz to lead a best-picture campaign backed
by significant funding from Marvel.

“A good movie is a good movie, and clearly it doesn’t
matter how much money a movie makes in order for it to be ‘a good
movie’ [in the minds of Academy members] because if [it did], the
films that get nominated and win [which have tended in recent
years to not be blockbusters] wouldn’t get nominated,” Boseman
continued. “And if it doesn’t matter, it doesn’t matter on both
sides. For my money, the only thing that matters is the level of
difficulty.”

Boseman added that what “Black Panther” did — creating its
own world, culture, politics, and more — was “very
difficult.”

“I dare any movie to try to compare to the [level
of] difficulty of this one,” he said. “And the fact that so many
people liked it — if you just say it’s [merely] popular, that’s
elitist.”

“Black Panther” grossed over $700 million domestically and
$1.3 billion worldwide, and has a 97% critic score on
review-aggregator site Rotten Tomatoes.