Board Thread:Movies/@comment-3048593-20180715232450/@comment-29908830-20180815222735

Given that the award is called "Best Popular Film" rather than "Most Popular Film", I'm pretty sure it won't involve the film with the largest gross revenue automatically getting the Oscar (though in regards to this year I wouldn't be too mad given that it would mean Infinity War wins). Movies that are eligible will probably involve a mixture of three options: Whichever films overcome a certain box office threshold (e.g. $500 million), whichever movies cannot take place in the "real world", or a combination of the two. They will then select the best of the bunch, and I'm predicting Black Panther due to the film's liberal social commentary and high aggregate scores that are only rivaled by M:I-Fallout this year (there's also the belief that ABC made these changes both to boost views and to have Black Panther win).

While popular movies have been nominated for Best Picture, winning is a whole other story, the obvious exceptions being The Return of the King and The Shape of Water. I'm not too bothered by that, though, since the Academy has stated that films nominated for Best Popular Film can still be nominated in Best Picture. I'm more concerned about the possibility that films are specifically aimed at that category, and for the most part will only be nominated in that category. Take Best Animated Film, for example. Animated films used to frequently be nominated in various technical categories, but since the 2010s they've only really been able to get one more nomination at most, and it's usually Best Original Song. MCU movies probably won't fare better, as well. Iron Man 1 and Guardians 1 are the only ones that received nominations other than Visual Effects, and of course, none of the films have won (even #!&@$*+ Suicide Squad won an Oscar). Expect it to get worse as time goes on.