Oscar Ceremony Will Be Three-Act Show With Different Host Every Hour
Nothing—and I mean nothing—can be worse than last year’s horrific Oscars ceremony (possibly the worst three hours of television I’ve ever seen in my life), so the Oscars having hosts this year is great news. They never should’ve gone without a host in the first place, so it seems they’ve learned from their mistake, and they’ll have THREE different hosts at the upcoming ceremony (one new emcee every hour), which is being described as a “three-act show.” Via Hollywood Reporter:
The Academy Awards are going from a host drought to a deluge. This year’s Oscars will be a three-act show with each one-hour act emceed by a different host, according to two sources with knowledge of the telecast planning.
After three years of hostless Oscars, the multi-host strategy helps address the biggest deterrents for potential emcees — the time commitment of preparing for the lengthy show and the often unflattering glare of the spotlight that the high-pressure gig can shine on entertainers. The plan also gives the Academy an opportunity to hire hosts who can attract different demographics to the flagging ABC telecast.
After decamping to novel locations like Union Station and the Academy Museum in 2021, this year’s Oscars will be returning to the 3400-seat Dolby Theatre, where hosts will have to entertain an audience of nervous nominees. When it comes to engaging the audience watching at home, they’ll have their work cut out for them. Thanks to the bleak pandemic box office, few of the best picture nominees have been widely seen, and there is no broadly appealing hit like The Lord of the Rings, which attracted the largest Oscars audience in history in 2004, at 46 million viewers.
[Hollywood Reporter: Oscars: 2022 Ceremony to Feature a Multi-Emcee Palooza]
If they’re smart, they’ll reveal each host separately over the next month to build suspense. In terms of who those hosts will be, it’s a no-brainer they’ll be gender and racially diverse, and I’m guessing one of the three will be a major movie star, while the other two will likely be comedians with previous hosting experience. As long as James Corden and Jimmy Fallon aren’t involved, we should be good. Either Maya Rudolph or Kristen Wiig would be great, but they play off each other so well, I’m not sure how one of them could do by herself:
I doubt they’d do this, but if they wanted a classic star, Bette Midler did a great job by herself presenting back in 1982:
