The success of TED having made Seth MacFarlane a legitimate name in the movie universe, the Academy and ABC have decided to make him an unexpected choice to host nest year’s Academy Awards telecast. This isn’t a crazy idea, although MacFarlane has never done anything like it. He’s obviously funny, he reaches that elusive 18-49 audience that the Academy desperately needs as its viewers age out of the demo with each passing year, and on a micro scale, he showed some ad-lib smoothness with his own technical error when presenting at this month’s Emmys. If nothing else, the pre-taped packages should be hilarious.
Perhaps the biggest surprise is that ABC is willing to give such prominent airtime to a FOX star, who will probably be using some of his network voices and characters in the course of his hosting duties. Desperation makes strange bedfellows…
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>We'll have some analysis later (good news: Extremely Loud! Margin Call for Screenplay! Bad news: no Michael Fassbender? No David Fincher?), but for now, here's a link to the full list of Oscar nominees:http://oscar.go.com/nominees?cid=ealert_012412_oscars_nom_nomindex_oscarpagevideovisitorsSent via BlackBerry by AT&T
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The Writers Guild of America, it should quickly be noted, operates under very strict eligibility rules, only allowing awards to go to films produced under WGA or WGA-affiliated contracts. That disqualified a number of very prominent Oscar contenders this year, including Django Unchained, Les Miserables, Amour and Beasts of…
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With the announcement of the Oscar nominations today, Lincoln only became more of a favorite by London oddsmakers (moving from a payout of about $1.80 on a $1 bet last week to about $1.40 today). The odds got a bit longer for Les Miserables and Argo, but Zero Dark Thirty had the biggest swing (from a…
About the Author
Mitch Salem
MITCH SALEM has worked on the business side of the entertainment industry for 20 years, as a senior business affairs executive and attorney for such companies as NBC, ABC, USA, Syfy, Bravo, and BermanBraun Productions, and before that, at the NY law firm of Weil, Gotshal & Manges. During all that, he has more or less constantly been going to the movies and watching TV, and writing about both since the 1980s. His film reviews also currently appear on screened.com and the-burg.com. In addition, he is co-writer of an episode of the television series "Felicity."
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