The 2022 Oscars Will Have A Host This Year (We Just Don’t Know Who It Is Yet)
They say that the third time’s the charm, but that isn’t necessarily the case for the Academy Awards. For the past three years, they’ve gone host-less, and for the past two years, they’ve seen ratings that stink worse than Joaquin Phoenix’s reused tuxedo at the end of award season. Last year’s ceremony, which so far has been the only Oscars held during a pandemic, made history as the least-watched and lowest-rated ceremony ever. It was host-less, as were the ceremonies in 2020 and 2019. But it was announced today that there will for sure be a host this year, for a ceremony that is scheduled to go on as planned at the end of March.
Just like last year, COVID has fucked up the plans for award season. A bunch of award shows and events have decided to bump or change their ceremonies. The 2022 Grammy Awards were supposed to take place on January 31st, but they’ve been postponed indefinitely, while the Sundance Film Festival has decided to go virtual, rather than in-person. Last year, the Academy Awards were postponed several times before it was decided they’d take place in April, which was a whole two months after the original date in February. This year, there won’t be any such musical Oscars. The 94th Academy Awards were booked for March 27, 2022, and that’s exactly the date they’ll happen on. “Ha ha ha ha, okay” laughed Omicron.
It might have been just coincidence that the 2020 and 2021 Oscars had truly crappy ratings, as opposed to the host-less 2019 ceremony (which didn’t actually do too badly in terms of ratings). Nobody is taking any chances this year, and they’re throwing a famous face in front of the crowd to run the show. via Variety:
Craig Erwich, president, Hulu Originals & ABC Entertainment, announced that the Oscars would indeed return to a host (after three years without one) on Tuesday morning, during ABC’s portion of the winter Television Critics Association virtual press tour. But he didn’t elaborate on who it might be. “It might be me,” Erwich quipped, before touting his confidence in Oscars executive producer Will Packer.
“Will really has his pulse on popular culture and entertainment,” Erwich said. “I know he has a lot in store and we’ll have more details to share soon.”
The whole host-less Oscars started in 2019 when Kevin Hart was hired to host the show, before the internet discovered some homophobic tweets from his past, and he was swiftly dropped. The Academy couldn’t get a host together in time, so there was no host. The same happened in 2020, because the host-less show saw ratings and viewership actually rise for the first time in a long time, so the Academy was banking on lightning striking twice. It didn’t (2020 saw ratings sink again). 2021 saw no host, because of the pandemic and everything was a mess about that ceremony.
Previously, in 2017 and 2018, the show was hosted by Jimmy Kimmel. We don’t know who will be hosting this year’s show. But the president of ABC Entertainment made it seem like it might be someone fresh and new, what with that comment about having their “pulse on popular culture and entertainment.” Uh oh, they already had a misguided attempt to be hip and cool with the youths, and it backfired, remember? Although maybe it’s time Gen Z gets its own version of James Franco and Anne Hathaway. If we (and Anne) had to suffer through that, then they can cringe over Timothée Chalamet acting as he’d be anywhere else than reading jokes off a teleprompter next to a TikTok celebrity.
Pic: YouTube