The 93rd Oscars will be held on April 25 and it seems like it will be (almost) business as usual at the Dolby Theatre.
With nominations set and just over a month until show time, details are trickling out about the 93rd Oscars and neither sweatshirts nor Zoom made the cut.
"Our plan is that this year's Oscars will look like a movie, not a television show," said show producers Jesse Collins, Stacy Sher and Steven Soderbergh in a statement on Friday. They've enlisted Emmy and Tony Award winning director Glenn Weiss to direct the live broadcast on April 25.
Although considerably scaled down from a normal year, the producers have said they are committed to holding an in-person event at Los Angeles' Union Station for nominees, presenters and limited guests. There will also be a live component at the Dolby Theatre, which has been home to the Academy Awards since 2001.
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But unlike the Golden Globes, which combined in-person and Zoom elements in its bi-coastal broadcast, the Oscars are not making a virtual element possible for nominees who either can't or don't feel comfortable attending. The producers said they plan to treat the event like an active movie set with on-site Covid safety teams and testing protocols.
And, yes, they expect attendees to dress up.
"We're aiming for a fusion of inspirational and aspirational, which in actual words means formal is totally cool if you want to go there, but casual is really not," producers said.
There will be other notable differences to this year's awards, with it being the first time the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences has permitted films that debuted on streaming and on-demand services to be eligible for contention, without screening in cinemas first.
This year is also only the fourth time that the Oscars have been postponed in the awards' almost 100-year history. In June last year, AMPAS announced that the Oscars would take place eight weeks later than the usual February date. The pandemic being the key reason for the postponement it also meant that dates for eligibility were extended till the end of February 2021.
"Our hope, in extending the eligibility period and our awards date, is to provide the flexibility filmmakers need to finish and release their films without being penalised for something beyond anyone's control," said Academy president David Rubin and Academy CEO Dawn Hudson in a joint statement at the time the new date was announced.
The Oscars have been postponed before, for similarly world-changing reasons. The ceremony was pushed back a week because of disastrous flooding in Los Angeles in 1938. In 1968, it was delayed two days following the assassination of Dr Martin Luther King Jr. And in 1981, it was put off for 24 hours after President Ronald Reagan was shot in Washington DC. The 1981 decision was made four hours before the broadcast was scheduled to begin.
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In a year of change, the 93rd Academy Awards also mark the first time two women have been nominated in the coveted Best Director category. Nomadland director Chloe Zhao and Promising Young Woman director Emerald Fennell were nominated against David Fincher for his film Mank, Lee Isaac Chung for Minari and Thomas Vinterberg for Another Round.
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Advertise with NZME.The 93rd Academy Awards will be screening live on TVNZ and online via TVNZ OnDemand on April 26, with festivities kicking off around 10am Auckland time.
- Additional reporting by NZ Herald
