Chadwick Boseman on Disney's chances at Oscars: Want Black Panther to win Best Picture, not Popular Film

Los Angeles: Actor Chadwick Boseman says he wants Black Panther to win the Best Picture Oscar, not the Popular Film award. The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences has added the “outstanding achievement in popular film” category in 2018, but have yet to announce the criteria. [caption id=“attachment_4329279” align=“alignnone” width=“825”] Chadwick Boseman in a still from Black Panther. Marvel[/caption] “We don’t know what it (the new prize) is, so I don’t know whether to be happy about it or not. What I can say is that there’s no campaign for popular film; like, if there’s a campaign, it’s for best picture, and that’s all there is to it,” Boseman told The Hollywood Reporter’s Scott Feinberg during a recent episode of the publication’s Awards Chatter podcast. Disney has enlisted veteran strategist Cynthia Swartz, who previously handled awards bids for films like The Social Network, Boyhood, and The Grand Budapest Hotel, to mount the Marvel film’s Oscar campaign. “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 movies that get nominated and win wouldn’t get nominated; 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. Black Panther broke barriers for black representation in cinema and went on to become one of the biggest box-office successes in the superhero genre.