The Oscar nominees and eventual winners are voted on by members of the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences, but this year, there’s a category that’s fully in the hands of the public. The Academy is teaming up with Twitter for the Oscars Fan Favorite Twitter competition, where users of that social media platform can vote on both their favorite movie and favorite cinematic moment in 2021. While many people are hoping Spider-Man: No Way Home reigns supreme after not scoring any official Oscar nominations, it looks like it could face some major competition from a Zack Snyder offering from last year.
Sorry, fans of Zack Snyder’s Justice League, because we got the theatrical Justice League cut in late 2017, even though that version of the movie was largely reshot by Joss Whedon, it means that Snyder’s four-hour vision of Batman, Superman, Wonder Woman, Aquaman, Flash and Cyborg coming together for the first time in the DC Extended Universe isn’t eligible. Instead, Snyder himself went on Vero to advocate that people vote for Army of the Dead in the Oscars Fan Favorite competition. The movie accessible with a Netflix subscription was released on May 14, 2021, two months after Zack Snyder’s Justice League hit HBO Max.
Army of the Dead marked Zack Snyder’s return to the world of zombies after previously helming the Dawn of the Dead remake from 2004. With an ensemble cast including Dave Bautista, Ella Purnell, Omar Hardwick, Ana de la Reguera, Theo Rossi, Tig Notaro and Matthias Schweighöfer, the movie saw a group of mercenaries being hired to procure $200 million from a casino in zombie-infested Las Vegas. Army of the Dead was met with a decent amount of positive critical reception, and now Snyder is advocating that it get some attention at the 94th Academy Awards, as winners of the #OscarsFanFavorite and #OscarsCheerMoment will be recognized during the telecast.
However, Army of the Dead isn’t the only competition that Spider-Man: No Way Home may face in this Oscars event. Deadline has heard that the Camila Cabello-led Cinderella that premiered on Amazon last September has also been thrown into the mix by fans as contenders, as has Johnny Depp’s Minamata. It’s hard to imagine either of those movies giving No Way Home a run for its money compared to something like Army of the Dead, but regardless, the public has until March 3 to submit their picks on Twitter with the appropriate hashtags, and up to 20 submissions are allowed per day.
Even if Army of the Dead doesn’t come out on top in this cinematic match, fans of the movie can at least take comfort knowing it was the first chapter in a larger saga. The zombie-less prequel Army of Thieves followed in October, and the anime series Army of the Dead: Lost Vegas, which is set at the start of the zombie outbreak, is expected to arrive on Netflix sometime later this year. Snyder also plans to direct the officially-titled sequel Planet of the Dead once he’s done finished shooting Rebel Moon, which recently added Justice League alum Ray Fisher and many others to its cast.
The 94th Academy Awards air Sunday, March 27 on ABC. Be sure to look through our list of the 2022 Oscar nominations to learn which movies will compete for those coveted golden statuettes.
