Oscars Look to Rebound from The Slap with Record Breaking Night

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The Academy Awards will be held this Sunday and it’s a big event. Last year, Will Smith went on stage during the ceremony at the Dolby Theatre and slapped Chris Rock on the face; it was one of the most well-known moments of the Awads.

The show starts at 8pm Eastern Time (ET) on ABC. You can watch it with a subscription to Hulu Live TV, YouTubeTV, AT&T TV, or Fubo TV. Additionally, it will be available to stream on ABC’s website and app with your provider’s login information.

Jimmy Kimmel is hosting the show tonight for the third time! It’s his first solo emcee role in five years and he promised to make some jokes about “The Slap”- according to him it would just be silly not to.

The chief executive of the film academy, Bill Kramer, mentioned that it’s important to choose a host who can think quickly and take care of things if something unexpected happens.

Jimmy Kimmel made a joke about this on Good Morning America saying that nobody was hurt when he hosted the Oscar show since everyone was behaving nicely.

Jimmy Kimmel will host a special ceremony where the movie “Everything Everywhere All at Once” could get many awards. This action-comedy indie flick stars Michelle Yeoh and Ke Huy Quan, and has 11 nominations.

The producers have made some changes to the Oscars this year, like changing the carpet colour from red to champagne, and making the broadcast more interactive than usual.

The academy has been having a hard time lately, and it wants this year to go smoother. So, now they have made a team that helps handle emergencies better. They say their response to what happened last year was not good enough. Neither Chris Rock or Kevin Smith (who is banned for 10 years) will come to the event this year.

The Academy Awards are trying to be cool again. A good thing is that this year’s movies for the “Best Picture” category are really popular and exciting! That includes movies like “Top Gun: Maverick”, “Avatar: The Way of Water”, “Elvis” and “Everything Everywhere All at Once”. People usually watch the Oscars more when they know the nominees – so this could help ratings go up.

A movie called “All Quiet on the Western Front” could win lots of awards this year. It’s made by Netflix and is up for nine awards. That’s tied for second most with “The Banshees of Inisherin”, also from Netflix. There’s another film from Netflix – “Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio” – that looks like it might get the prize for best animated film.

At the awards, Rihanna will show off her Super Bowl performance and sing her Oscar-nominated song “Lift Me Up” from “Black Panther: Wakanda Forever.” David Byrne, Stephanie Hsu and some musicians belong to Son Lux will do a rendition of “This Is Life” from “Everything Everywhere All at Once.” Another band called Rahul Sipligunj and Kaala Bhairava are going to perform their song “Naatu Naatu” from Indian film “RRR.” Lastly, Lenny Kravitz is also joining in to perform during the In Memoriam tribute section. Lady Gaga unfortunately can’t join in because she’s busy filming something new so we won’t get to hear her nominated song “Hold My Hand”from “Top Gun: Maverick.”

Last year, a movie that was streamed on Apple TV named “CODA” won the best picture award. This year, however, most of the contenders for the best picture honor were theatrical releases. Even though we had some good news because going to movies became popular again by reaching 67% of what it used to be before the pandemic hit us, this year had its own set of problems with lots of big hits but also periods when people were too worried and stayed away from theaters.

Recently, many movies and TV shows were released such as “Creed III” and “Cocaine Bear”. They were successful but potential problems that might happen in the future are causing some people to worry. On March 20th, the Writers Guild is going to start negotiating with the major studios which could possibly lead to films and television not being made at all.

The Oscars are trying to become the top award show again. Last year’s viewers increased a lot, going up to 16.6 million from the 10.5 million who watched the special edition from 2021. In regular years usually, the people who won best actor and actress present those awards but that won’t be happening this time. We don’t know yet who will replace Smith in presenting best actress at this ceremony.

If you want to stay updated on the Academy Award news this year, follow film writer Jake Coyle’s Twitter at: http://twitter.com/jakecoyleAP. Or you can also visit https://apnews.com/hub/academy-awards for more details.