Sony Pictures CEO thinks Spider-Man: Brand New Day deserves Best Picture nod

Still, despite its box-office dominance and pop culture impact, chasing Oscar glory is ambitious. Traditionally, Spider-Man films—comic-book movie adaptations more broadly—haven’t made much headway in the major categories. As Deadline pointed out, previous live-action Spidey movies have earned nominations only in technical categories like visual effects and sound, with Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man 2 winning Best Visual Effects. The 2018 animated film Spider-Man: Into The Spider-Verse, meanwhile, won Best Animated Feature. But when it comes to Best Picture, Black Panther and Joker remain the only comic-book movies to have earned nominations.

Rothman described himself as a “traditionalist” who opposed expanding the number of Best Picture nominees from five to 10, though he certainly sees the benefit for commercially successful films like Brand New Day. “I think when you see movies like F1 and Barbie and Wicked and Bohemian Rhapsody, whatever, getting nominated, well that is the very reason that the Academy changed to 10,” he said. Brand New Day seems to be headed back to cinemas for a re-release, potentially giving the film another chance to catch the attention of Academy voters. “The Academy members are really, really smart, and they know filmmaking,” he said, adding that if they see the movie this time around, he thinks “they’ll recognize how extremely skillful it is, because they’ll know how hard it is to tell an intimate emotional story in that arena.”