In 2004, Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King took home 11 Academy Awards including Best Picture, Best Director and Best Adapted Screenplay. The number of Oscars taken by the film nearly doubled the number taken by Fellowship of the Ring and The Two Towers combined. Does that mean that Return of the King was viewed by the Academy as being leaps and bounds better than the films it followed? Perhaps, but probably not. Instead, the most popular theory is that the Academy didn't want to shower the franchise with awards three years in a row, so they decided to just throw all of the prizes at the third installment. Now Warner Bros. is planning to capitalize on that same idea with the Harry Potter movies.

Variety reports that the studio is now planning a full-on Oscar push for Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2. Both the most critically praised (the film has a 97% on Rotten Tomatoes) and biggest box office hit in the franchise ($328 million domestically and still growing), WB is pushing for the Academy to award the achievements of the final film as a representative of the series in its entirety. Since beginning in 2001, Oscar gold has been kept out of the franchise's reach, the seven previous films nominated for a total of nine awards without ever winning one. In addition to Harry Potter, Warner Bros. also plans to create campaigns for Clint Eastwood's J. Edgar, Steven Soderbergh's Contagion, and Stephen Daldry's Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close.

Try as they might, I highly doubt that Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2 is going to have Return of the King level success. While I suspect that they will get a few nominations, particularly in technical areas, I don't see the voters putting it up for Best Picture. The new rules state that there will be a minimum of five and a maximum of ten movies nominated for the top prize, but there is no set total and films will have to score more than a certain amount in order to qualify. As good as the final Harry Potter movie is, I doubt it will be able to stand up against some of the heavy hitters arriving this Fall.