2025 Oscars: Robert Downey Jr., Cillian Murphy, Da’Vine Joy Randolph and Emma Stone to Present at 97th Academy Awards
Academy Award winners Robert Downey Jr., Cillian Murphy, Da’Vine Joy Randolph and Emma Stone will present at the 97th Oscars, executive producer and showrunner Raj Kapoor and executive producer Katy Mullan announced today.
All return to the Oscars stage after winning last year in their respective acting categories. Hosted by Conan O’Brien, the Oscars will air live on ABC and stream live on Hulu on Sunday, March 2, 2025, at 7 p.m. ET/4 p.m. PT, with the official live red carpet show airing at 6:30 p.m. ET/3:30 p.m. PT.
The producers will continue to announce talent joining the show in the coming weeks.
Academy producers had previously announced the return of the ‘Fab 5’ format, with previous Oscar winners presenting the nominees in each of the acting categories but that idea has now been scrapped after the controversy over Best Actress nominee Karla Sofía Gascón (Emilia Pérez) and dozens of tweets over the last few years that were found on her X/Twitter account detailing racist, xenophobic comments as well as disparaging comments about her own co-star, Selena Gomez, long before they met and worked together. Since the controversy erupted, reports say that Netflix has disavowed Gascón, refusing to pay for any of her travel or expenses to the numerous events, Q&As and more she was to attend in the week ahead of Oscar winner voting, including the Critics Choice Awards on Friday and the Directors Guild and Producers Guild Awards on Saturday. Gascón is still set to receive the Virtuoso Award at the Santa Barbara International Film Festival on February 9, alongside Gomez, but no word on if she will attend. While there have been calls online to revoke Gascón’s nomination, there has been no comment from the Academy of any kind. Sources say that the ‘Fab 5’ format will still happen in the director’s category and for some of the below the line awards.
Emilia Pérez, the brash musical which details the story of a Mexican cartel kingpin (Gascón) who transitions from male to female to save her family from warring druglords, leads this year’s Oscar nominations with 13 including Best Picture, Best Director, Best Supporting Actress (Zoe Saldaña) and two Original Songs nods.
The film smashes the previous record for total nominations for a non-English language film, which was previously held by 2000’s Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon and 2018’s Roma (also from Netflix). Titular star Karla Sofía Gascón, nominated for Best Actress, became the first out trans performer to be nominated for an acting Oscar. Emilia Pérez led the Golden Globe Awards wins with four last month, including Best Motion Picture – Musical or Comedy and Best International Film, and is nominated for 11 BAFTA Film Awards and 10 Critics Choice Awards.
A24’s The Brutalist and Universal Pictures’ Wicked are next with 10 apiece. Both are vying for Best Picture, Supporting Actress, Film Editing, Original Score and Production Design. The $10 million dollar budgeted 3h35m epic The Brutalist brings to life the story of a Hungarian architect who escapes the Nazis for a life in America and is a film director Brady Corbet had been trying to make for over a decade. This is the third directorial effort from the former actor. Wicked, based on the Tony Award-winning Broadway musical about the life of Glinda the Good Witch and Elphaba the Wicked Witch of the West, was one of 2024’s biggest blockbusters, earning over $700 million worldwide and with a sequel, Wicked: For Good, coming out later this year. Among its 10 nods, Best Actress nominee Cynthia Erivo becomes the first Black British actress to receive a second nomination. Erivo was previously nominated for Best Actress for portraying Harriet Tubman in 2019’s Harriet.
Focus Features’ papal thriller Conclave earned eight nominations but for a second time director Edward Berger missed out on a Best Director nomination after the same fate fell him for 2022’s All Quiet on the Western Front, a Best Picture nominee and winner of four Oscars. The film did scoop up nods for Ralph Fiennes as Best Actor and first ever nomination for Isabella Rossellini, whose mother, Ingrid Bergman, won three Oscars. Searchlight Pictures earned eight nods for James Mangold’s Bob Dylan biopic A Complete Unknown with Timothée Chalamet as Dylan. This is Chalamet’s second Oscar nomination after 2017’s Call Me By Your Name. New star Monica Barbaro snagged a Supporting Actress nomination for her work in the film as folk legend and Dylan paramour Joan Baez.
Oscar winner voting begins February 11 and goes through February 18.
He is a Rotten Tomatoes-approved critic, accredited by the Cannes Film Festival, Telluride Film Festival, Toronto International Film Festival and more, is a member of the International Cinephile Society (ICS), The Society of LGBTQ Entertainment Critics (GALECA), Critics Choice Association (CCA), San Francisco Bay Area Film Critics Circle (SFBAFCC) and the International Press Academy. Among his many achieved goals with AwardsWatch, he has given a platform to underrepresented writers and critics and supplied them with access to film festivals and the industry and calls the Bay Area his home where he lives with his husband and son.
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