Hollywood screenwriter questions whether Black Panther deserves an Oscar nomination: No one thinks it's really good

The black superhero movie "Black Panther" made history by becoming the first superhero movie to be nominated for the Oscar for Best Picture. In Hollywood, where racial issues are sensitive, it seems that everyone is tacitly aware of it, but there are also some straightforward people.

Recently, Brett Easton Ellis, the original author and screenwriter of "American Psycho", publicly questioned whether "Black Panther" deserves to be nominated for an Oscar. He believes that Oscar voters chose it for diversity considerations, not because it is really good.

Ellis made the comments on his latest podcast, where he said: "No superhero movie has ever been nominated for Best Picture. But believe me, Disney is doing everything they can to make it happen. No one I've met in Hollywood actually thinks Black Panther is that good, but they're supporting it as a symbolic gesture."

The episode was recorded on January 17, before the Oscar nominations were announced, but Ellis had already predicted that Black Panther would be nominated for Best Picture and questioned whether it really deserved it.

"The entertainment media and the studios are pushing this idea that Black Panther is a great work of cinematic art that cannot be ignored. This idea is grabbed by our throats and we can only laugh it off. Or feel that we are trapped, this is a joke, a scam. This is all fake news ," Ellis said.

"Token gestures are so important to them, often for the sake of silly inclusion and diversity. And the obsequiousness of such gestures is that it makes it seem as if inclusion and diversity have anything to do with rewarding the merits of a film. Yes, this is the culture that the Oscars are promoting, and it's disgusting ," he continued.

Brett Easton Ellis, 54, started out as a novelist and later branched out into screenwriter, producer and director. Four of his novels have been adapted into feature films, of which American Psycho starring Christian Bale is the most well-known. In 2016, he directed his first TV series, The Deleter.