Oscars look to La La Land, host Kimmel for ratings boost
LOS ANGELES — If the Oscars had doubled down on nominating films with actors named Ryan, the ceremony’s chances for a ratings bounce might be as likely as host Jimmy Kimmel’s Trump jokes.
Saluting a blockbuster such as Ryan Reynolds’ Deadpool is the surest way to lure viewers. But there’s optimism afoot that the Ryan Gosling-Emma Stone charmer La La Land, combined with pop-star performances and Kimmel’s agile wit, will make today’s ceremony a winner.
“The fact that La La Land is a musical, it’s a feel-good movie, it’s a romantic movie, it does bode well for the ratings this year,” said Paul Dergarabedian, senior analyst with media research firm comScore.
The modern reimagining of a classic Hollywood musical received a record-tying 14 nominations, including for best picture, its stars and writer-director Damien Chazelle. La La Land has dominated other awards, including the Golden Globes and Screen Actors Guild.
Among the eight other competitors are Moonlight, Manchester by the Sea and Fences. Missing in action despite an unfilled 10th slot: superhero romp Deadpool. That means the ceremony, which last year posted its smallest audience in eight years (34 million), can’t ride the movie’s $363-million US box-office coattails to ratings glory.
The comparable North American take for La La Land, $134 million and counting, is far from shabby.
The same goes for the topgrossing nominee, Hidden Figures, which has surpassed $144 million, according to comScore.
And there will be no shortage of high-wattage star power in the three-hour ceremony. The nominees include heavyweights Denzel Washington (Fences) and Meryl Streep (Florence Foster Jenkins), with presenters ranging from newcomers (Felicity Jones, Riz Ahmed) to veterans (Samuel L. Jackson, Shirley MacLaine).
The tunes are courtesy of top-tier musicians performing nominated songs, including John Legend (Audition and City of Stars from La La Land) and Justin Timberlake (Can’t Stop The Feeling from Trolls).
With Washington among several African-American nominees, the “OscarsSoWhite” protests that marked last year’s event — and gave host Chris Rock ample comedy fodder — are absent.
Instead, as with other recent awards shows, U.S. President Donald Trump could be a prime target of Kimmel’s quips and those seeking to vent.
The president “absolutely” will be mentioned during the show, Kimmel said, but how much depends on the news of the day. The comedian downplayed the possibility of backlash from Trump supporters.
“I think smart people know funny is funny,” Kimmel said. “Everybody, for some reason, has decided that they have to pick a side, and I think people would be a lot happier if, when they heard a joke, they enjoyed the joke and didn’t attach some kind of rooting interest to it.”
But scattered and competing calls have already arisen for a boycott of the telecast or the ceremony itself, from those fed up with Hollywood’s activism and industry insiders seeking to make a statement about Trump’s policies.
Whatever the evening’s tone, an inescapable truth is that bigger movie grosses mean better Oscar ratings: Titanic, which brought in more than $600 million domestically, holds the record with 55 million viewers in 1998. The ceremony also boasted audience favourite Billy Crystal as host.
“Selfishly, we’d love to have Rogue One nominated for best picture, or Jungle Book nominated for best picture,” ceremony producer Michael De Luca said. He waxed nostalgically about years past, in which popular hits including 1975’s Jaws and 1977’s Star Wars” were contenders.
“We’re a little envious of that that era because it means more eyes on the telecast. But you play the hand you’re dealt,” he said.
In the cynical view of one Oscar watcher, that hand reflects the increasingly entrenched attitude of movie academy members about which films are worthy of honours.
“The individual [Oscar] voters aren’t thinking of the ratings. They’re simply invested in being snobs,” said Tom O’Neil, editor of the awards-prediction website GoldDerby.com.
“In recent years, they’re embracing art-house films and message movies, specifically indie films. They automatically perceive that as art.”
Even the expansion of the bestpicture category to 10 potential nominees, which followed the
snubbing of 2008’s critically acclaimed blockbuster The Dark
Knight, has largely failed to dent voter resistance to box-office champs.
Titanic filmmaker James Cameron put it bluntly in an interview last month. The movie academy considers its “patrician duty to tell the great unwashed what they should be watching,”’ not rewarding what viewers pay to see, Cameron told The Daily Beast.
“And as long as the academy sees that as their duty, don’t expect high ratings. Expect a good show, and do that duty, but don’t whine about your ratings.”
Yet ABC, De Luca and fellow producer Jennifer Todd remain upbeat. “This is our Super Bowl,” said Marla Provencio, ABC Entertainment’s executive vicepresident for marketing.
LOS ANGELES — Jimmy Kimmel says he never really wanted to host the Academy Awards.
“If anything, what I wanted is for people to publicly say that I should be the host and that it’s an outrage that I am not the host, but then to not actually have to host it,” the 49-year-old comedian said. “Because hosting turns out to be a lot of work, and as you know, people are very critical.”
Kimmel, who has twice hosted the Emmy Awards, will make his Oscars debut on Sunday. He talked with the AP about his preparations. AP: How does preparing to host the Oscars differ from the Emmys or the work you do on Jimmy Kimmel Live? Kimmel: My show is every night, so it’s mostly disposable. We write jokes for the day and we write jokes for the next day and we just keep going. … Whereas with the Emmys and the Oscars, you know you have a big audience, you know that you’re going to be evaluated, you’re going to be judged and you want to do as good a job as possible. AP: What are your biggest concerns? Kimmel: I have a lot of jokes and I have to whittle them down and figure out which ones to use. That’s not as easy as it might sound, because a room full of comedy writers is a very different audience than a room full of movie stars who have cameras on them. You can’t really go onstage to a comedy club and try this material out either, because that’s also a different audience and you want the jokes to remain secret, and nowadays people seem to tape everything and post it on the Internet. So I really am in a little bit of a bubble as far as what will work and what doesn’t, and really the only way we’ll know is when I’m on that stage. AP: How political will you get? Kimmel: I’m not sure how to answer that question. I mean, will Donald Trump be mentioned by me and during the show? Absolutely. How much I’m not sure yet. It kind of depends on what’s happening that day, you know?