Oscars ceremony to be reinvented as a movie

LOS ANGELES: The Oscars ceremony on April 25 will have the look and feel of a movie, giving winners more time for speeches, while masks will play a major role, producers of the show said on Saturday. The pandemic and a trio of new producers have led to a reinvention of the traditional show where the world’s highest movie honours are handed out before a seated theatre audience of more than 4,000 A-list stars and industry executives. Much of the ceremony will instead be held at the Art Deco Union Station in Los Angeles, where a stage is being built and where presenters will be doing more than opening an envelope with the winner’s name.

“It’s not going to be like anything that’s been done before,” director Steven Soderbergh, who is producing the show with Stacey Sher and Jesse Collins, said.

Soderbergh, who directed the 2011 movie Contagion, said the pandemic has “opened up an opportunity to try something that hasn’t been tried”. Soderbergh

said the ceremony would be shot like a movie, with presenters including Brad Pitt, Harrison Ford and Halle Berry.

Speeches by Oscar winners were earlier limited to 45 seconds. This year, Soderbergh said, “we’re giving them space. We’ve encouraged them to tell a story, and to say something personal”.

The producers said strict testing and Covid protocols would be in place, much of them following standards developed last year to get movie and TV production running again.

They also have consulted extensively with epidemiologists who worked 10 years ago on “Contagion”, which eerily foreshadowed the devastating effects of a virus on the world.

Asked about masks at the ceremony, Soderbergh said, “Masks are going to play a very important role in the story.”

The ceremony will be preceded by a 90-minute pre-show that will include performances of the five original song contenders that were recorded in advance on the roof of the new Academy Museum in Los Angeles, and in Iceland.