It’s nonetheless the preferred occasion on TV. Virtually 20 million viewers tuned in to final 12 months’s Academy Awards to see who would take house the Oscar for, amongst different classes, Finest Image. (Oppenheimer gained.) The ceremony was the thirteenth most watched telecast in all of 2024, and the highest leisure present.
Solely soccer and a once-every-four-years presidential debate beat out final March’s ceremony. The Oscars bested the Grammys, beat the World Sequence, and even vaulted over the Olympics. As TV watching continues to get extra fragmented, we will nonetheless depend on the Academy Awards to carry us collectively across the watercooler to talk films.
The Finest Image nominee pool has been set at 10 movies because the 2022 broadcast, a various group of films to please plenty of tastes. This 12 months, there are blockbusters just like the sci-fi sequel Dune: Half 2 and The Wizard of Oz prequel fantasy Depraved, middle-brow faves just like the Bob Dylan biopic A Full Unknown and the papal election thriller (sure, thriller!) Conclave, plus smaller art-house fare just like the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel adaptation Nickel Boys, and Hungarian architect-émigré drama The Brutalist (whose working time is something however small: over three-and-a-half hours).
The hosts is perhaps simply as vital as the films to get us enthusiastic about tuning in. It’s no shock that the wildly widespread actor and comic Bob Hope was invited to emcee 19 occasions, and he nonetheless holds the document right now for a number of ceremonies. Billy Crystal is available in second, at 9 occasions, beginning in 1990 (Driving Miss Daisy gained) and final internet hosting in 2012 (The Artist). The King of Late Night time, Johnny Carson, hosted 5 occasions, and Whoopi Goldberg has 4 internet hosting gigs below her belt, first in 1994 (Schindler’s Record) and final in 2002 (A Stunning Thoughts).
It’s no coincidence that these hosts are all comedians who can maintain a three-hour-plus ceremony entertaining and transferring alongside easily. This 12 months, former late-night host and podcaster Conan O’Brien is taking the reins for the primary time.
Final 12 months’s huge viewership numbers continued a three-year upward development in rankings (after a low of 10.4 million viewers throughout the COVID-restricted present in 2021), so O’Brien has some stress to make it an awesome present whereas on the identical time recognizing the devastating Los Angles fires and their influence on theHollywood group. However that’s what the laughs are for!
The Oscars, Sunday, March 2, 7/6c, ABC & Hulu