Peter Jackson’s The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey received three Academy Award nominations.
Its nominations were for Best Production Design, Best Makeup and Hairstyling, and Best Visual Effects at the 85th Academy Awards. The film did not win any of those categories, making it distinct from The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King, which won all 11 of its nominations.
An Unexpected Journey was the first part of Jackson’s three-film adaptation of J. R. R. Tolkien’s 1937 novel The Hobbit. It expanded material from the relatively short book into a feature-length Middle-earth adventure and introduced audiences to Martin Freeman as Bilbo Baggins.
The film’s awards record is sometimes confused with the total nominations for the complete Hobbit trilogy. The trilogy received several nominations across its three releases, but this question asks specifically about the first film.