After several years of experimenting with the format — no hosts, groups of hosts — the Academy Awards is returning to its tried-and-true format of one host, typically a TV star or standup comedian. In this case it is a man who has hosted the Oscars before, Jimmy Kimmel Live! star Jimmy Kimmel.
Kimmel hosted the Oscars telecast previously in 2017 and 2018. (2018 was also the last year the Oscars had a single host; they went three straight years without an emcee. In 2022, the telecast was hosted by Regina Hall, Amy Schumer, and Wanda Sykes.) The only people who have hosted the Academy Awards more than three times are Whoopi Goldberg and Jack Lemmon (both with four appearances), Johnny Carson (five), Billy Crystal (nine), and Bob Hope (a whopping 19 times — 20 percent of all Oscar broadcasts).
The Academy announced Kimmel’s return on its official Twitter account.
As host in 2017, Kimmel presided over one of the most infamous moments in the long history of the Academy Awards, when La La Land was initially announced as the winner of the Best Picture prize, when in fact Moonlight was the actual winner. As the team from La La Land came to accept their award, the real winner was then revealed.
Here was Kimmel’s opening monologue from the 2017 Academy Awards.
The 2023 Academy Awards will be handed out at the Dolby Theater in Hollywood on March 12, 2023. The nominations will be announced on the morning of January 24. It’s still fairly early in this year’s race, but the frontrunners for the top nominations appear to include Steven Spielberg’s semi-autobiographical drama The Fabelmans, the indie hit Everything Everywhere All at Once, Martin McDonagh’s The Banshees of Inisherin, Tar starring Cate Blanchett, and Top Gun: Maverick.
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