Will Deadpool be the first superhero movie to land a Best Picture Oscar nomination? It sure is looking possible. The film was in development for years before 20th Century Fox finally greenlit the R-rated superhero movie, albeit with a much smaller budget than what traditionally accompanies a film of this genre. But Deadpool was a massive success when it opened last February, going on to gross $783 million worldwide. It was funny and amusing and filthy, and fans quickly began demanding a sequel, turning this little movie nobody wanted to make into one of the most anticipated superhero franchises around right now. And that was that, Deadpool was a hit and it spawned a new superhero franchise. Done and done. Or so we thought…

Fox began an awards campaign for Deadpool and star Ryan Reynolds last fall, which seemed amusing but obviously had no chance of succeeding. Reynolds then scored a Golden Globe nod as did the film itself for Best Picture - Musical or Comedy, but those are the Globes—they’re wacky! They nominated The Tourist for pete’s sake, so that didn’t really mean anything.

Alongside a few mentions on critics’ Top 10 lists here and there, the film’s first serious recognition came from the Writers Guild of America, which nominated Rhett Rheese and Paul Wernick for Best Adapted Screenplay. It was a shocking validation, but it was no fluke. Now the film has scored a coveted nomination from the Producers Guild of America, and folks are starting to seriously consider the possibility the Deadpool could be a Best Picture Oscar nominee.

Why do the WGA and PGA nominations suddenly make Deadpool a contender? Well the guilds are seen as the biggest predictors of potential Oscar nominations and eventual winners, given that some of those who vote for the WGA awards and PGA awards are also Academy members. There’s genuine voter overlap, they’re groups made up of actual industry professionals just like the Academy, and so seeing what nominations arise from a voting body such as this can oftentimes mirror the eventual Oscar nominees.

Thus, with Deadpool now having been nominated for a Writers Guild of America award and Best Picture from the Producers Guild, it’d be silly not to consider the possibility that the film could actually score an Oscar nomination for Best Picture.

The PGA nominees rarely match up exactly with the Best Picture Oscar lineup, but they do have significant overlap. Here’s a quick overview of how many PGA nominees became Oscar nominees over the past couple of years:

 

So, as you can see, the PGA’s list of nominees usually misses just two or three of the eventual Oscar nominees. And this year’s list is as follows:

Arrival

Deadpool

Fences

Hacksaw Ridge

Hell or High Water

Hidden Figures

La La Land

Lion

Manchester by the Sea

Moonlight 

Looking closer at the films in years past that made the PGA cut but didn’t get an Oscar nomination may give us a better idea of Deadpool’s chances. Last year, Sicario earned both a PGA nomination and a WGA nomination—just like Deadpool—but missed out on Oscar. And two years ago, Gone Girl—a commercial success and more of a “popcorn movie” than many other traditional awards players—also scored both PGA and WGA noms and missed the Oscar cut. Same with Nightcrawler. These are somewhat darker films with genre-like undertones, so it could be a trend that continues with Deadpool, meaning no Best Picture nomination. Or it could just be a coincidental statistic.

And therein lies the rub. We can crunch numbers all day, but the voting for Oscars is done by living human beings with tastes of their own. Sure there are trends that give us an idea of what might happen, but it’s possible Deadpool landed a PGA nomination simply because it was an incredibly tough film to actually get produced. Could enough Academy voters put Deadpool as #1 on their ballot to give it a Best Picture nod? It only takes 300 to make the cut, so absolutely it’s possible. Will it happen? Maybe.

If I had to guess right now I’d say no—it might get close, but I’m dubious it’ll land on the final list with films like La La Land, Arrival, and Moonlight vying for that #1 position on the ballots. Then again, enough people put Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close as #1 on their ballots over The Tree of Life, The Artist, The Help, etc. for that movie to land a Best Picture nomination, so stranger things have certainly happened.

The interesting addendum, of course, is that the whole reason the Academy expanded the Best Picture field from five nominees to anywhere up to 10 is to include more commercial films following The Dark Knight’s surprising snub. Christopher Nolan’s masterwork was a virtual lock for a nomination, but lost out in the end. That serious, thematically probing, deeply dramatic film was poised to be the first superhero movie to score a Best Picture nomination because, well, only a “very serious” superhero movie could actually be in that conversation at all. Ironically, Deadpool of all things—a potty-mouthed, juvenile comedy—could be the one that breaks that barrier.

For more on the Oscar race, click here to catch up on all of my Oscar Beat installments and peruse links to my predictions articles below.

Best Picture

Best Director

Best Actor

Best Actress