Marvel Studios head Kevin Fiege thinks ‘Black Panther’ should be recognised at the Oscars

KEVIN Feige thinks ‘ Black Panther’ should be recognised at the Oscars.

The Marvel Studios head has heaped praise on the hugely popular blockbuster, but admitted while he feels it deserves its plaudits, the Academy Awards doesn’t have a strong history of honouring comic book movies.

Speaking to Vox, he said: “I think there are a lot of amazing artists that helped to make that movie, and it would be wonderful if they could be recognised.

“Almost everyone involved in that movie, bringing that movie together, is great, and it would be wonderful to see if they’re recognised. We’ll see. This genre, typically not.”

His comments come after Kendrick Lamar - who worked on the soundtrack for Marvel’s blockbuster - was recognised for his efforts by being invited to join The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.

The rapper is among 928 potential new members including Amy Schumer, Tiffany Haddish and Jada Pinkett Smith.

The Academy announced the long list of names last month, and it set a record by adding the most number of stars ever in a bid to diversify its members following the outrage over the lack of African-American nominees in 2015 and 2016, which led to the # OscarsSoWhite movement.

In 2017, 774 new members were added, 683 in 2016 and 322 the year before.

Last year, The Academy’s CEO Dawn Hudson revealed plans to increase it by 1,500 and 535 respectively by 2020.

And if all of these years chosen members accept their invites, the membership will rise to 9,226.

That will mean 38 per cent of the Oscars’ governing body will be comprised of people of colour, an increase from 13 per cent in 2017 to 16 per cent. In separate news, Kevin says Marvel will continue to bring new characters to the big screen.

The Marvel Studios President wants to strike a balance between much loved characters getting their sequels as well as having new characters start their own stories too.

He said: “It’s one of the reasons we’ve expanded to three films a year, is so that we could do the sequels to films that people have responded to - because we love to make continuing stories with characters people have responded to - but also keep doing the stuff that nobody’s ever heard of, and people go, ‘ Why are you doing that?’ That’s fun. And that’s what Phase One was built on, Phase Two was built on, Phase Three was built on, is having that ... Whenever we announce the next year, two years, three years, five years, whatever we’re going to announce, there will be plenty of those that, maybe people in the know like yourself will know what they are, but the world at large will go, ‘What is it? Why are they doing that? That’s exciting for sure.”

And the 45-year- old filmmaker explained why there can be such big gaps between movie sequels.

He added to Cinema Blend: “When you’ve got, what is it now, six, seven separate franchises? It’s part of the scheduling process. Sometimes when people ask, ‘What about this character, what about that character?’ I go, ‘ Well, it’s scheduling.’ And they go, ‘What’s he talking about?’ Scheduling. How many years between movies can you have? You know, ( Thor:) Ragnarok was four years. There’s four years between, right? He had an appearance in between there. So that seems to be maybe okay - sometimes, though, you want it to be less. Sometimes it can be more.” — BANG Showbiz