Will ‘Harry Potter’ be nominated for best picture at Oscars?

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The ‘Harry Potter’ movie franchise may be the most successful in Hollywood history, grossing more than $2 billion in the U.S., but it hasn’t fared well at the Oscars. The films have received only seven nominations, all in the tech slots, and none resulted in a win. Can the final installment, ‘Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows — Part 2,’ be nominated for best picture?

‘Why not?’ asks Pete Hammond at Deadline. ‘Although the Academy historically shuns this type of film and doesn’t favor fantasy, sci-fi or kid flicks you can point to the ‘Lord of the Rings’ trilogy and say there is an exception to every rule.’

That’s true. The final installment of that franchise, ‘Return of the King,’ ended up winning all of its 11 nominations, thus tying the all-time record set by ‘Titanic’ and ‘Ben-Hur’ as biggest Oscar champ of all time. But the previous two installments were nominated for best picture, and there was a widespread belief that, if those academy geezers denied Hobbit geeks the top prize one more time, the geeks would fling Oscar into the fiery depths of Mount Doom.

Over at the Wrap, Steve Pond is musing over the best picture prospects of ‘Deathly Hallows — Part 2,’ and he agrees that the Oscar buzz is real, but both Pond and Hammond quote actual voters as saying that the hope is a long shot. Two chief problems: the film’s fantasy elements and the fact that it’s a kids’ flick. Yes, but that was also true of 1982 best picture nominee ‘E.T.’

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— Tom O’Neil