“The Hobbit” leads Saturn Award nominations

PanARMENIAN.Net - Warner Bros./New Line’s The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey topped the Saturn Award nominations, nabbing nine of the precious slots for recognition given out by the Academy of Science Fiction, Fantasy & Horror Films, The Hollywood Reporter said.

Fox’s Life of Pi and Sony/MGM’s Skyfall were also leading contenders, receiving eight and seven nominations, respectively.

On the TV side, Fox TV's Fringe led the nominations with six, elbowing out Showtime’s Dexter, which nabbed five. Also receiving Saturn love were AMC’s Breaking Bad, TNT’s Falling Skies and Leverage, NBC’s Revolution and AMC’s The Walking Dead, which scored four each.

The Saturns give props to so-called “genre” movies, a term that encompasses sci-fi, fantasy, comic-book adaptations and horror films. In the Hollywood days of yore, these types of movies were given second-class status, but in the geekified pop culture of the 21st century, they are the films that often receive the most lavish attention.

The nominations for best science fiction films included Marvel’s The Avengers, Fox's Chronicle, Warners’ Cloud Atlas, Lionsgate’s The Hunger Games, Sony’s Looper and Fox’s Prometheus. The best fantasy category included Sony’s The Amazing Spider-Man, The Hobbit, Pi, Snow White and the Huntsman, Fox Searchlight's category-stretching Ruby Sparks and Universal’s Ted.

The best horror/thriller category was also eclectic, with Argo, Sony’s Zero Dark Thirty and Summit’s The Impossible rubbing shoulders with Lionsgate’s The Cabin in the Woods and CBS Films’ The Woman in Black and Seven Psychopaths.