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Soderbergh, a best director Oscar winner for
"Traffic," will produce the April 25 televised ceremony along
with Hollywood veterans Stacey Sher and Jesse Collins, the
Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences said in a statement.
The annual ceremony, the highest honors in the movie industry,
was pushed back two months because of the shutdown in movie
production worldwide caused by the coronavirus pandemic. It is
only the fourth time in the 93-year history of the Academy
Awards that the scheduled date has been changed.
“The upcoming Oscars is the perfect occasion for innovation and
for re-envisioning the possibilities for the awards show,"
Academy President David Rubin and Chief Executive Dawn Hudson
said in Tuesday's statement.
Television and movie awards shows since the pandemic resulted in
massive business and activity restrictions have been a mixture
of virtual, pre-recorded and live events, mostly without red
carpets and audiences.
Tuesday's statement gave no details of how the 2021 Oscars would
take place. The ceremony is usually held at the 3,400-seat Dolby
Theatre in Hollywood, but Los Angeles is currently under a
lockdown which prohibits mixing with other households and has
forced restaurants and many other businesses to shut down in the
face of a surge in coronavirus hospitalizations.
“We're thrilled and terrified in equal measure," Soderbergh,
Collins and Sher said in the statement. "Because of the
extraordinary situation we're all in, there’s an opportunity to
focus on the movies and the people who make them in a new way,
and we hope to create a show that really FEELS like the movies
we all love.”
The Oscars will be televised live on ABC television on April 25,
and in more than 225 countries worldwide.
(Reporting by Jill Serjeant; Editing by Leslie Adler)
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