AFP, published on Tuesday, January 11, 2022 at 9:31 p.m.
The Oscars night will find a master of ceremonies for the first time since 2018, announced Tuesday the ABC channel, which broadcasts the flagship event of the American film awards season, whose audience has only fallen in recent years .
For the 94th edition organized on March 27, the Oscars will return to Hollywood and their traditional Dolby Theater.
Last year, the coronavirus pandemic forced the Academy of Cinema Arts and Sciences to hold the gala evening in the large train station in central Los Angeles, with a reduced scale in accordance with health rules. The televised broadcast, without a master of ceremonies, had gathered around ten million spectators, a decrease of 56% compared to 2020 which had already recorded a historically low audience.
“I can confirm that the Oscars will have a reigning host this year,” Craig Erwich, president of ABC Entertainment, told a panel discussion hosted by the Television Critics Association.
Mr. Erwich did not wish to give more details, refusing in particular to say if the comedian Jimmy Kimmel, master of ceremonies for the Oscars in 2017 and 2018, was going to repeat.
In 2019, comedian Kevin Hart gave up taking control of the evening after old tweets deemed homophobic resurfaced. He had not been replaced and the ceremony had taken place with a succession of different presenters, without a chief host to orchestrate everything.
This formula had been very well received and had even been taken up by other awards, such as the Emmy Awards, but the last two editions of the Oscars had been criticized for their lack of humor and rhythm.
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