Angela Bassett: 'Black Panther' Deserves the Academy Award for Best Picture (Exclusive)

"Black Panther" already won the box office for 2018 -- cementing its place in pop culture for years to come -- but could it also take home the highest honor in film, the Oscar for Best Picture? Angela Bassett sure thinks so.

The movie just made award show history by becoming the first superhero flick ever to nab a Best Picture - Drama nomination for the 2019 Golden Globes. Saying she was proud the film was "shattering stereotypes" with its Globe nom, Bassett -- who played Queen Ramonda -- told TooFab the Marvel movie's hot streak should continue all the way to the Academy Awards.

"In my mind, it has the Oscar. I think it deserves it," she explained while promoting her upcoming Transformers film, "Bumblebee."

"I think the movie works so brilliantly on so many levels. It's superhero, marvel universe and all of that, but it connected with historians, it connected with culture, it connected globally, it just reached in and grabbed folks' hearts and their minds and shattered so many expectations and preconceived notions," she continued.

Historically, superhero films haven't fared too well on Hollywood's biggest night, where they've mainly been nominated and celebrated for their technical achievements in visual effects or makeup. Movies like "The Incredibles" and "Big Hero 6" have fared better, picking up trophies for Best Animated Feature Film, but never cracked the major categories. The biggest superhero success story so far is probably Heath Ledger, who got a best supporting actor trophy thanks to his unhinged performance as The Joker in Christopher Nolan's "The Dark Knight."

Though "Wonder Woman" got a lot of love last year and also became a pop culture phenomenon, it failed to become the first superhero movie to score a Best Picture nomination. But Bassett says the strength of "Black Panther" can't be ignored this time around.

"It was a powerful, powerful piece of cinema that just could not be dismissed," Bassett said of Ryan Coogler's film. "It provoked, it made you think about it, think about yourself and your world and that's what theater can do, that's what movies can do, the best of them have done to us, and this is up there."

She's not the only one who thinks that either. The movie holds a stellar 97% on Rotten Tomatoes, nabbed an A+ in audience reactions on CinemaScore and has been celebrated by the BET Awards, MTV Movie & TV Awards, Saturn Awards, African-American Film Critics Association and AFI, just to name a few.

We'll see how "Black Panther" fares when the nominations for the 2019 Oscars are announced on January 22, 2019, followed by the (currently hostless) telecast on February 24.