Fantastic Beasts picks up first ever Oscar for Harry Potter franchise
Costume designer Colleen Atwood finally heard those magic words
Amid all the drama at the Oscars last night (when La La Land was mistakenly named Best Picture instead of the real winner Moonlight), you might have missed one small but notable event – the first Academy Award ever won by the Harry Potter franchise.
Yes, that’s right – despite 14 nominations (including Fantastic Beasts) over 9 films, the adaptations of JK Rowling’s work have always missed out, until spin-off Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them picked up the Best Costume Design honour at last night’s ceremony.
With that said, it wasn’t a first for the winner herself, Colleen Atwood, who has previously bagged Academy Awards for Chicago, Memoirs of a Geisha and Alice in Wonderland and has had 12 nominations over her career. Maybe she brought a little of her own winning magic to proceedings…
"Sting told me I was going to win tonight. I didn't believe him," Atwood joked during her speech, and then went into more depth backstage at her surprise to be the first Harry Potter Oscar winner.
“I didn’t realise that. That’s shocking,” Atwood said (via EW). “Because there’s so much incredible kind of artistry in the Harry Potter movies.
"I think maybe the fact that this movie, J.K. Rowling’s creation is set in the 1920s, which kind of keyed off a different sort of visual sense, might be the kind of obvious thing, but I can’t believe they never won for that incredible clockwork creation of Stuart Craig in the Harry Potter movies. I wasn’t aware of that.”
The film was also nominated for Best Production Design, which it lost to La La Land, but hey – can’t win ‘em all. Or any at all for 16 years, apparently.
Authors
Huw Fullerton is a Commissioning Editor for Radio Times magazine, covering Entertainment, Comedy and Specialist Drama.
