Despite his latest pet project, Avengers: Infinity War, making cinematic history on more than one occasion this year – by way of an unprecedented $250 million-plus opening weekend stateside, and subsequently becoming the fastest film to reach the $1 billion plateau – president of Marvel Studios, Kevin Feige, isn’t too concerned about how the Anthony and Joe Russo-directed blockbuster will fare come awards season.
Scheduled to close out what’s already been a record-breaking 2018 with the twentieth MCU entry – Ant-Man and the Wasp – Marvel Studios, which eclipsed $3 billion at the ticket booth last month, is the highest-grossing film franchise of all time. Bafflingly, however, box office and critical success has yet to translate into Oscar gold.
The colossal $16.8 billion earned globally by the MCU throughout the last decade has resulted in a total of ten Academy Award nominations in the Visual Effects, Sound Editing, and Makeup and Hairstyling categories, but not a single win.
Speaking at the Produced By conference in Los Angeles this weekend, Feige addressed the MCU’s lack of awards season recognition, saying the following:
“Maybe it’s easy to dismiss VFX or flying people or spaceships or billion dollar grosses. I think it is easy to say that you have already been awarded in a certain way. Hitchcock never won best director, so it’s very nice, but it doesn’t mean everything. I would much rather be in a room full of engaged fans.”
Predictably, Feige doesn’t appear too heartbroken over the lack of a statuette on his mantle, and I’m assuming most Marvel and Disney execs aren’t, either. I guess when your franchise is closing in on $17 billion earned worldwide, and what with Avengers: Infinity War teetering on the precipice of making cinematic history once again – as it’s expected to hit the $2 billion mark by month’s end, a feat only ever achieved thrice before: Star Wars: The Force Awakens ($2.068B), Titanic ($2.187B), and Avatar ($2.788) – a pompous party snub is easy to overlook, eh?
