The 2024 Oscars ceremony is starting to take shape! The Academy is in the final stages of preparing for the upcoming 96th Academy Awards ceremony, which Jimmy Kimmel will host for the fourth time (second in a row). As part of that final step of the process, they announced this week the first wave of presenters who will be introducing several awards during the night. They have also confirmed who will be performing live during the show.
Mahershala Ali, Nicolas Cage, Jamie Lee Curtis, Brendan Fraser, Jessica Lange, Matthew McConaughey, Lupita Nyong’o, Al Pacino, Michelle Pfeiffer, Ke Huy Quan, Sam Rockwell, Michelle Yeoh, and Zendaya have all been confirmed to be taking the stage on March 10 to introduce a variety of Oscars categories.
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Four of those names were expected, and it’s been confirmed that last year’s acting winners will be introducing this year’s acting categories. As such, Jamie Lee Curtis is expected to introduce Best Supporting Actor, while Ke Huy Quan will present the award to this year’s Best Supporting Actress. At the same time, Brendan Fraser will likely hand the Oscar to whomever he announces as the Best Actress this year, and Michelle Yeoh will do the same to the Best Actor of the year.
FIRST PRESENTERS FOR THE 2024 OSCARS
It’s unknown who will be taking which category from the rest of the list. There are still 19 unassigned categories, and considering they typically present them in pairs, there are still a lot of names to be announced. To save some time, last year they decided to group some of the categories to be announced back-to-back by the same presenters, and that could also be the case this year. Think of the Best Animated Short and Best Live-Action Short.
What’s interesting about this list is that there’s been this semi-unfounded belief in Hollywood that actors do not want to attend or present at the Oscars, and especially, host. The hosting part is easy: it’s a thankless job that can never boost anyone’s career but it can certainly generate a lot of negativity around it. There’s also some evidence to suggest that people don’t like attending the Oscars, from last year’s no-show by James Cameron and Tom Cruise to simply industry giants not attending the ceremony unless they are nominated.
But when it comes to presenters, though, Kimmel himself was a guest recently on Matt Belloni’s podcast The Town, where he said that they had a lot of A-listers who’d submitted themselves as presenters, and they had to pick and choose which ones they wanted to have. Aside from some gags that can go wrong (remember Jesse Plemons’ reaction to Amy Schumer’s seat-filler joke to Kirsten Dunst, or the backlash over Ariana DeBose’s joke about being an actress who only thinks she can sing?), they tend to go really well.
WHO IS PERFORMING AT THE 2024 OSCARS?
Another big unknown going into the ceremony until a few days ago was whether Ryan Gosling would be performing live “I’m Just Ken”, his Barbie hit song that got an Oscar nomination and that could very well win over Billie Eilish’s other Barbie song, “What Was I Made For?”
Variety had the scoop earlier this week, and the Academy confirmed it on Wednesday. Gosling will indeed be singing “I’m Just Ken” along with Mark Ronson, but they’ve also confirmed that Eilish will be singing her tune, and Becky G will be performing “The Fire Inside”, from Flamin’ Hot. Jon Batiste will be playing “It Never Went Away” from his Netflix doc American Symphony, and Scott George and the Osage Singers will be performing “Wahzhazhe (A Song For My People)” from Killers of the Flower Moon.
The show will start one hour earlier than in previous years on March 10, at 4 pm PT/7 pm ET, and though we should probably expect a lot of jokes from Kimmel about how long it is, it’s probably going to clock in around 3-3.5 hours, which is still much more tenable than the four-hour ceremony we used to have not that long ago.
In terms of predicted winners, the above-the-line categories seem pretty clear, with Oppenheimer expected to take Best Picture and Best Director really easily, as well as Best Supporting Actor (Robert Downey Jr.). Da’Vine Joy Randolph should take home Best Supporting Actress.
The Best Actor/Actress categories are split between Cillian Murphy and Paul Giamatti (who might have the narrowest edge), and Emma Stone and Lily Gladstone (who might have a slightly better chance of winning). And finally, the screenplay categories should go to Anatomy of a Fall and either Oppenheimer or Barbie (don’t discount the backlash to Greta Gerwig and Margot Robbie’s lack of nominations to act in the latter’s favor).
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Voting has now closed, so it’s only a matter of days before we find out definitively. Do you have any specific predictions going into the 2024 Oscars ceremony? What was your favorite movie last year? What do you think about the list of presenters and performers at the ceremony? Let us know your thoughts on our Twitter and our Discord server!
SOURCE: ABC
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