“Spider-Man: No Way Home” is a sure bet to swing home with the first fan-voted trophy at this year’s Academy Awards, according to a new survey.
Industry watchers’ spidey-senses were tingling when the Academy on Monday posted a tweet revealing the top 10 leaderboard (listed alphabetically) in the Oscars’ first-ever fan-favorite voting contest, in partnership with Twitter — a list which, alongside “No Way Home,” included the critically panned “Cinderella” starring Camila Cabello, as well as indie film “Minamata” starring Johnny Depp and Zack Snyder’s “Army of the Dead.”
But the latest movie featuring Marvel’s famed webslinger should ultimately cruise to victory in the race: 26% of U.S. adults said “Spider-Man: No Way Home” was their favorite film of 2021, nearly double the next-closest contender (Disney’s “Encanto”), according to a recent Morning Consult survey.
The Sony/Marvel Studios movie, which was the highest-grossing film at the 2021 box office, garnered only one Oscar nomination — for visual effects. The Academy is introducing the movie-fan award for this year’s Oscars, as part of its efforts to gin up excitement for the telecast, which (like many awards shows) has seen a steady drop in TV ratings over the last several years.
Following “Spider-Man: No Way Home,” Americans’ favorite films of 2021 were “Encanto” (14%), “Dune” (8%), “Don’t Look Up” (6%) and “Ghostbusters: Afterlife” (4%), per the Morning Consult survey. Eight movies tied with 3%: “Sing 2,” “Jungle Cruise,” “Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings,” “Venom: Let There Be Carnage,” “Black Widow,” “Cruella,” “Free Guy” and Steven Spielberg’s “West Side Story.”
Morning Consult conducted the survey Feb. 19-20, 2022, among a representative sample of 2,210 U.S. adults. The research outfit said the survey has an unweighted margin of error of plus or minus 2 percentage points. What’s worth noting: Only 25% of respondents named a favorite film when prompted, and many of those surveyed said they did not see any new films last year amid the coronavirus pandemic.
For the Academy’s fan-favorite stunt, movie fans can vote on Twitter for their favorite film of 2021 by tweeting the title along with the hashtags #OscarsFanFavorite and #Sweepstakes — and users can vote up to 20 times per day. Fans also can vote at oscarsfanfavorite.com. Voting ends at 11:59 p.m. PT on March 3, 2022. The winner will be announced during the 94th Academy Awards broadcast on Sunday, March 27, live on ABC.
The Oscars fan-voting sweepstakes will award three randomly selected grand prizes giving each winner and a guest a three-day/two-night trip to attend next year’s Academy Awards (scheduled to take place in late March 2023) and to be a guest presenter at the kudocast.