The Academy has basically responded to this practice by giving Netflix the side-eye. Though the streaming service has accumulated seven total nominations, all have been for documentaries—films that for years have been dependent on non-theatrical distribution. That’s not due to a lack of quality choices; for 2015’s Beasts of No Nation, Idris Elba was nominated for the supporting-actor BAFTA Award and Golden Globe, and he won the supporting-actor Independent Spirit Award and SAG Award. When the Oscars failed to nominate Elba—or any other actor of color—in 2016, the ensuing #OscarsSoWhite controversy became deafening. The perceived anti-Netflix bias was, understandably, a little lost in the uproar.

Netflix is now trying harder than ever to break through at the Oscars. The company paid a reported $12.5 million for Mudbound at the 2017 Sundance Film Festival, and the company almost certainly did so in order to have a horse in the Oscar race. It’s probably no coincidence that the big sale came just days after that year’s Oscar nominations were announced, and Manchester by the Sea—an Amazon acquisition—received six nominations in major categories.

A weaker-than-usual adapted-screenplay race may represent Netflix’s best shot for a major Oscar nomination this year, for either Mudbound or, possibly, Angelina Jolie’s First They Killed My Father (which was dealt a blow when it failed to make the best foreign-language film shortlist. It helps, perhaps, that the nominees for this category are specifically selected by the Academy writers branch—a demographic that might be less afraid of an imminent Netflix world takeover than other branches. And just one nomination in an important category could go a long way toward normalizing Netflix across the Academy.

As for superhero films: these cash cows aren’t as clearly and openly maligned by the Academy as Netflix films, and they routinely show up in below-the-line Oscar categories like visual effects and makeup/hairstyling. But since the comic-book movie boom began in the early aughts, only one superhero film has scored a nomination in a major Oscar category—Heath Ledger’s performance in The Dark Knight, the eventual posthumous winner for best-supporting actor. The lack of nominations for great superhero films has inspired frequent backlash; former Academy president Sid Ganis essentially told The Hollywood Reporter’s Scott Feinberg in November that The Dark Knight’s failure to receive a best-picture nod was a major reason why the Oscars subsequently expanded the best-picture category to 10 movies. Still, no superhero film has managed to contend for a major Oscar since Ledger’s win.

Whether any post–Dark Knight superhero movie actually deserved a major Oscar nomination is debatable. But maybe adapted screenplay is the perfect place for one to break through. After all, distilling more than five decades’ worth of a character’s comic history to capture their core essence into one coherent movie doesn’t seem easy. And though Oscar ratings seem to be decreasing every year, recognizing hugely populist films in marquee categories could be a way of righting that ship.

It seems unlikely that both a Netflix movie and a proudly commercial superhero film will be up for adapted screenplay Oscars. But it’s very possible that one or the other will end up cited in the category—and guessing which will make it in is a little bit like speculating what the N.F.L. would do if it were forced to give an award to either Colin Kaepernick or Bennet Omalu, the Nigerian doctor who discovered the traumatic brain effects of concussions. If this year’s adapted-screenplay race ends up finding a slot for Mudbound or First They Killed My Father but not Wonder Woman or Logan, or vice versa, the nominations may finally reveal what the Oscars are truly more afraid of—Netflix or superhero franchises.