Rumor has it that President Obama plans to host a screening of the civil rights film "Selma" at the White House on Friday. Inside sources reportedly say that the film's cast and crew are invited to the movie viewing as we kick off the Martin Luther King Day weekend.

The Washington post and The Hill are just two of the major media outlets who are reporting on today's screening, although there doesn't seem to be any official word on the event from the White House thus far.

The Washington Post has reported that the screening with be an "intimate late-afternoon gathering" and attendees are expected to include members of the movie's cast and crew (music legend Common is said to be on the guest list) as well as Washington VIPs. Rep. Terri Sewell (D-Ala.) will reportedly attend. The media outlet says that it's also on "high alert for an Oprah sighting" at the event, as the TV legend was a producer on the film.

"Selma," a movie that depicts the 1965 march from Selma, Alabama to Montgomery, Alabama, led by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., also takes a hard look at the related civil rights struggies and issues that faced the U.S. at that time.

According to BBC News, the film picked up two Academy Award nods this week. The first is for Best Picture and the second is for Best Original Song, thanks to John Legend and Common's collaboration on "Glory."

However, reports are making the rounds that aside from these two nominations, the film was allegedly "snubbed" by the Academy, due to the fact that actor David Oyelowo, who played Dr. King, and Ava DeVernay, the film's director, failed to make the cut for their own award nods.

The White House has reportedly screened several other Oscar-contending films in years past. Most recently was last year's "Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom" and in 2012 Stephen Spielberg's "Lincoln."

The screening will take place in the White House within the confines of the presidential "family theater." The cozy 44-seat movie theater was converted from a long cloakroom in 1942 when the current East Wing building was constructed. It's undergone some cosmetic overhauls through the years, most recently in 2004 when the formerly white theater was transformed into a viewing chamber boasting rich red hues from floor to ceiling.

In a divergent side note, with "Selma" slated to play out on the president's big screen today, the White House reports that the first film ever shown within its walls was "The Birth of a Nation." The film, a racist epic that celebrates the Ku Klux Klan as America's saviors, was screened in 1915 by Woodrow Wilson in part to "repay a political debt to southern supporters."

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