The Oscars are reinvented as a film, with masks and longer speeches

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – The Oscars ceremony next week will have the look and feel of a movie, giving winners more time for speeches, while coronavirus masks will play a major role, they said Saturday the producers of the program.

The coronavirus pandemic and a trio of new producers have led to a reinvention of the traditional show where the world’s highest film honors are handed out to a seated theater audience of more than 4,000 A-list stars. industry executives.

Much of the April 25 ceremony will be held at Art Deco Union Station in downtown Los Angeles, where a stage is being built and where the presenters will do more than open an envelope with the name of the winner.

“It won’t be like anything that had been done before,” director Steven Soderbergh, who produces the show with Stacey Sher and Jesse Collins, told a news conference.

Soderbergh, who directed the 2011 film “Contagion,” said the pandemic had “opened up the opportunity to try something that hasn’t been tried.”

“We want the show to have a voice,” he added.

Soderbergh said the ceremony would be shot like a movie, with presenters like Brad Pitt, Harrison Ford and Halle Berry “playing themselves, or at least a version of themselves.”

Previously, the speeches of the Oscar winners were limited to about 45 seconds. This year, Soderbergh said, “we give them space. We encouraged them to tell a story and say something personal. “

The producers said strict protocols and COVID would be put in place, many of them following the standards developed last year to re-run film and TV production.

They have also consulted extensively with epidemiologists who worked ten years ago on “Contagion,” which mysteriously foreshadowed the devastating effects of a virus on the world and experienced a good increase in rents and transmissions last year.

Asked about the masks at the ceremony, Soderbergh gave what he called a deliberately cryptic answer.

“Masks will play a very important role in history,” he said. “This topic is very central to the narrative.”

Candidates who are unable to travel to Los Angeles for the ceremony will be able to participate via satellite connections from locations around the world, but there will be no Zoom appearances.

The ceremony will be preceded by a 90-minute pre-show that will include performances by the five candidates for the original song that were previously recorded on the roof of the new Academy Museum in Los Angeles and Iceland.