Fantastic Beasts Nominated For Two Academy Awards

The nominees for the 89th Academy Awards have been announced, and Warner Bros. and the Harry Potter franchise continued its tradition of critical acclaim after being nominated for two Academy Awards.

The J.K. Rowling prequel was nominated for both Production Design as well as Costumes.

For those that did not see the film, Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them is an all-new adventure returning us to the wizarding world created by J.K. Rowling. Academy Award winner Eddie Redmayne (The Theory of Everything) stars in the central role of wizarding world magizoologist Newt Scamander, under the direction of David Yates, who helmed the last four Harry Potter blockbusters. Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them opens in 1926 as Newt Scamander has just completed a global excursion to find and document an extraordinary array of magical creatures. Arriving in New York for a brief stopover, he might have come and gone without incident...were it not for a No-Maj (American for Muggle) named Jacob, a misplaced magical case, and the escape of some of Newt's fantastic beasts, which could spell trouble for both the wizarding and No-Maj worlds.

The movie scored a 76.83 in the ComicBook.com Composite User Rankings and grossed $231M domestically.

Rowling had high hopes for film, which was in no small part to the success of her Potter franchise, but went into the release believing that fans would enjoy the product.

"In Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them, you're learning about a part of magical history that that's talked about in the Potter books but you never see," she said. "I'm getting a chance to tell that now. In the 1920's, magic developed very differently in America. Because of this tension, their wizarding world is in a state of high alert at that time. This is new material. There are ways in which we connect to the Potter books that I think people will find surprising. We're talking about the first time a wizard rose and threatened the world order. This was always where I was interested in going. This is what I wanted to do."

The movie will be up against, Arrival, Hail Caesar!, La La Land, and Passengers for Production Design.

It will battle against Allied, Florence Foster Jenkins, Jackie, and La La Land in Costume Design.