Jackman Is Chosen as Host of Oscars
The producers of the Academy Awards are counting on a mutant wolverine who is People magazine’s reigning Sexiest Man Alive to inject some desperately needed razzle-dazzle into their annual telecast.
was chosen as host of oscars, the Australian actor known to film audiences for playing a furry comic-book hero in the X Men movies, will be host of the 81st incarnation of the Oscars, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences announced on Saturday. ABC will broadcast the awards show on Feb. 23.
Its producers told they hoped to achieve multiple goals with the casting of Mr Hugh Jackman. 1st, there is a desire to put more movie in the annual movie business extravaganza. Jon Stewart and Ellen DeGeneres, recent hosts, are both primarily known as television stars. Laurence Mark, a co producer of the Oscars telecast, with Bill Condon, told there was also a desire to steer clear of stand up comedians.
“We're trying to get away from this late night talk show rut,” Mr. Mark told in a telephone interview. “It seemed to us that we needed to turn a corner and get somebody who is, imagine that, a movie star.”
Mr. Hugh Jackman’s selection is an attempt to play to the audience at home too, which has been shrinking in recent years. Viewers of the ceremony are overwhelmingly female — the Oscars are known in the advertising world as the Super Bowl for women — and producers clearly expect Mr. Hugh Jackman to turn out that demographic in droves.
“It certainly did not escape us that Hugh Jackman looks terrific in a tuxedo,” Mr. Mark told.
With any luck, a host plucked from within the movie industry’s own ranks — and less emphasis on stand-up comedy, which has often been at the expense of people sitting in the audience — will play well inside the Kodak Theater too. In recent years the crowd of movie insiders has seemed to respond to hosts with notable coldness.
Mr. Hugh Jackman is 40 years old, has never been nominated for an Oscar but has artistic credibility, an important credential for the MC of the film awards show. He has won positive reviews for turns in films like “The Prestige” and “Kate & Leopold.” He won a Tony Award in 2004 for his role in the musical “The Boy from Oz.”
He also has experience as an awards show M.C., winning an Emmy in 2005 for his appearance as host of the Tonys. He presided over that ceremony three times.
The Oscars are a very different phenomenon from the Tonys. The film honors are an awkward hybrid — a telecast about the movies set in a theater — that require their host to oscillate between jocular chitchat and solemn introductions, while sprinkling in just the right amount of self-deprecation.
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