Superhero movies, like horror, action, and comedies, are rarely considered for prestigious industry awards in Hollywood except for technical achievements. However, 2008’s The Dark Knight by Christopher Nolan started to blur the lines when the comic book movie explored Batman’s tortured struggle as he tried to save the soul of Gotham from the politics of crime and the chaotic psychopathic games of the Joker. It ended up earning Heath Ledger a posthumous Academy Award and persuaded the Academy to extend their number of Best Picture nominees to ten to give more blockbuster movies a chance to be included.
Another actor portraying the clown prince of crime ended up winning an Oscar, Joaquin Phoenix for 2019’s Joker. And before that, Black Panther had earned a nomination for Best Picture. With these progressions, it’s natural that studios putting out franchise movies that have more to say will try to draw award attention their way. Warner Bros looks to be campaigning for award considerations for another dark knight movie, this year’s The Batman. And they aren’t settling for just the technical awards either.
The awards the studio is campaigning for include the big one — Best Picture. As well as a Best Actor nod for Robert Pattinson and Best Supporting Actress for Zoe Kravitz. For Best Supporting Actor, they are putting up a lot of their supporting cast, including Paul Dano, Jeffrey Wright, John Turturro, Peter Sarsgaard, Berry Keoghan, Andy Serkis, and of course, Colin Ferrell. Ferrell, having fooled a lot of people by being unrecognizable in the role as the Penguin, is a major standout. In fact, he enjoyed playing the role so much he’s ecstatic to return in the HBO Max spin-off series.
For behind-the-camera consideration, Warners is interested in pushing Matt Reeves for Best Director and Best Adapted Screenplay along with co-writer Peter Craig. The Batman raked in over 700 million at the box office and has garnered mostly praise with an 85% critics aggregate on Rotten Tomatoes and an 87% audience score.