This Movie Is Unsurprisingly On Track To Win The Oscars First Fan Favorite Award

In case you hadn't heard, the 95th Academy Awards ceremony is going to be, shall we say, interesting. The Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences made serious waves this week after announcing that eight major awards categories — including Film Editing, and Original Score — will not be presented during the show's primetime broadcast (per The Hollywood Reporter). The unexpected move is being made in hopes of streamlining the broadcast and attracting new viewers.

That's not the only decision the Academy has made to attract new viewers of late, however, with the Academy's Fan Favorite Film category proving another surprise move aimed at helping boost viewership. The award is new to the Oscars and designed specifically to include blockbuster films that don't typically compete in anything but technical categories. It's also the first-ever award to be selected by the general public, with the Academy utilizing Twitter as ground zero for the voting process. In the run-up to the ceremony, the category's top 10 leaderboard rankings were recently released on The Academy's Twitter page, and it'll likely come as no surprise which super-powered blockbuster is apparently leading the pack.

As reported by Variety, Marvel Studios' latest billion-dollar baby "Spider-Man: No Way Home" is indeed the odds-on favorite to win the first Fan Favorite Academy Award statue. That should hardly come as a shock since "No Way Home" has cruised to nearly $2 billion in worldwide ticket sales since its December 2021 release (per Box Office Mojo), and proven a smash hit with both critics and fans (per RottenTomatoes), many of whom believe it to be the most ambitious MCU offering to date.

That list includes the likes of filmmaker Kevin Smith and late-night TV host Jimmy Kimmel, both of whom displayed genuine outrage that "No Way Home" wasn't included among the year's Best Picture nominees (per Variety). Seems the third film in the Tom Holland-fronted "Spidey" franchise may swing its way into the Oscars conversation anyway, as Variety is noting a recent Morning Consult survey which claimed "No Way Home" was voted favorite movie of 2021 by 26% of those surveyed as proof it will easily win the category.

Still, the web-slinger and his multiverse crew are in for quite a battle moving forward, with the likes of "The Suicide Squad," "Dune," "Malignant," and "Army of the Dead" all vying for the Fan Favorite award themselves. Plus, an unexpected push for Amazon's "Cinderella" from Camilla Cabello fans. If you want to cast your own vote in the poll, you can do so by noting your favorite 2021 movie on Twitter with the hashtag #OscarsFanFavorite, or by visiting oscarfanfavorite.com before the 11:59 p.m. deadline on March 3, 2022.