Painful news for the team behind the Oscar favourite The Hurt Locker, with one of their producers banned from attending the Academy Awards ceremony next Sunday.

French producer Nicolas Chartier has been blacklisted from the event after sending emails negatively portraying a rival film, and encouraging the public to vote for his film.

The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences confirmed this in a statement on Tuesday.

“Nicolas Chartier has been denied attendance at the 82nd Academy Awards as a penalty for violating Academy campaigning standards,” the statement said.

It was reported that Chartier send and email to thousands of movie fans urging them to vote for The Hurt Locker instead of ‘the 500 million dollar film’.

The mail out was seen as an attack on James Cameron’s film Avatar and consequently breached the ethical code set out by the Oscar officials.

Chartier was since forced to issue an apology for his initial email, in which he described it as “inappropriate and stupid”.

“My email to you was out of line and not in the spirit of the celebration of cinema that this acknowledgment is,” he said.

“I was even more wrong, both personally and professionally, to ask for your help in encouraging others to vote for the film and to comment on another movie.”

“As passionate as I am about the film we made, this was an extremely inappropriate email to send, and something that the Academy strongly disapproves of in the rules.??”

“My naiveté, ignorance of the rules and plain stupidity as a first time nominee is not an excuse for this behavior and I strongly regret it.”