With a Producers Guild nomination for Best Picture and a slew of additional award nominations and wins -- including various nominations from the Costume Designers, Art Directors, and SAG guilds; Critics Choice Awards (and a win for Best Action Movie), Cinema Audio Society, Casting Society of America, and the Publicists Guild; and the American Film Institute and National Board of Review -- director Patty Jenkins' acclaimed 2017 blockbuster Wonder Woman is making a strong play for a Best Picture nod at this year's 90th Academy Awards ceremony.
Wonder Woman is one of about a dozen pictures considered the primary pool from which the eventual Oscar nominees will be drawn, and Warner Bros. is making a play for Best Picture and Best Director slots, as well as other categories including Best Visual Effects and Best Adapted Screenplay. The superhero movie is one of two major contenders from the studio, alongside Christopher Nolan's Dunkirk, which almost certainly secured a spot among the final nominees.
Whether the strong likelihood of a nod for Dunkirk meant the studio allotted more of its award season budget for Wonder Woman in both major categories, or instead focused the budgeting on lobbying for Nolan as a Best Director pick, remains to be seen. But all indications are that Warner gave Wonder Woman a strong push, and so far it's paid off with the previously mentioned attention from many award season orgs and shows. The PGA nomination is a big win, since producers make up one of the two major voting blocks at the Oscars. The other major voting block is SAG members, who didn't single out the film for their main acting categories but did recognize it for its excellent stunt ensemble work.
So besides its universal acclaim from critics and audiences, its massive $821+ million worldwide box office, an estimated $100 million in domestic DVD/Blu-ray sales and rentals to date, and the wide array of award nominations and wins Wonder Woman has already accumulated, the film has a decent shot at winning an Oscar nomination for Best Picture.
Now, it's worth pointing out that while the PGA is a good indicator of top Best Picture contenders, the group has previously nominated superhero movies that were eventually left out of the Academy Award nominees. Most notably and controversially, The Dark Knight in 2008 scored several major guild nominations -- including Best Picture at the PGA, Best Director at the DGA, Best Supporting Actor at the SAG, and Best Adapted Screenplay at the WGA -- but the Oscars excluded it from both Best Picture and Best Director, causing such an uproar that the Academy subsequently changed their selection process for Best Picture. More recently, 20016's Deadpool earned an unexpected Best Picture nod at the PGA, while receiving no such love from the Oscars.
That said, Wonder Woman is one of two superhero movies this year with a lot of buzz about legitimacy as a Best Picture contender, the other being the terrific Logan. Due to both its high quality and loud buzz as well as major financial success, Wonder Woman appears to have the best odds of those two pictures.
If Warner has operated an Oscar campaign as good as the film's marketing over the summer -- probably the single finest marketing campaign of 2017 for any picture, including brilliant posters and advertising plus a publicity blitz that saw the studio allowing quick social media reactions from early screenings and an early embargo release that combined to build attention and anticipation to a frenzied height -- then however much it might seem other Best Picture contenders have scored enough other seasonal nominations/wins to give them an edge in the Oscar race, don't count out Wonder Woman. And for the record, it's on my own personal "ballot" of 10 films I'd select for Best Picture, if I had a vote.
How do Patty Jenkins odds for a Best Director nomination shape up? We've seen seven straight years of all-male Best Director nominees at the Oscars (and only five of those 35 nominations went to people of color, meaning 30 out of 35 were white men, in case you're keeping count), so in this year of rising attention to the inequality and harassment of women in Hollywood, it would seem likely that at least one female director will get a nod from the Academy. Since Lady Bird director Greta Gerwig appears to be on pace for a nomination, that raises the question of whether the voters are likely to select two women for Best Director spots on the final list. I'm inclined to think that, sadly, it's unlikely to happen, but I know a lot of people will be rooting for Jenkins (including me).
Whether or not Wonder Woman does get nominated for Best Picture at the 90th Academy Awards, it's already enjoyed a spectacular run and stands out as the biggest all-around success the DCEU has had so far. It's a template for how to successfully bring the rest of the DC characters to live-action in a way that wins over audiences worldwide, and in just 21 months the eagerly awaited sequel hits theaters. And the film is sure to earn a few Oscar nominations in other categories, including Sound Mixing, Film Editing, Visual Effects, and possibly a few others.
Still, it would be great to see the film score one final major victory -- for itself, and for the superhero genre. We'll find out for sure next Tuesday, at 5:22am Pacific Time, so stay tuned!
Box office figures and tallies based on data via Box Office Mojo , Rentrak, and TheNumbers.
Follow me on Twitter, on Google+, and on Quora. Read my blog.
