With Emmy voting in full swing, it’s hard to think ahead to the 2025 Oscars—unless you’re the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.
According to Puck, the Academy’s decision-makers are already hard at work trying to confirm a host for the 97th Academy Awards, but are so far not having much luck. Their original hope was to have Jimmy Kimmel, who hosted the 2024 awards—which attracted 19.5 million eyeballs, a four-year high—return. Alas, the Jimmy Kimmel Live! host (who also emceed the Oscars in 2017, 2018, and 2023) said no.
Fresh off his early 2024 Emmy win for Outstanding Writing For A Variety Special for Baby J, a memorable presenting gig at the Oscars in March, and the unexpected success of his experimental Netflix late-night special Everybody’s in LA, enthusiasm for a John Mulaney-fied Oscars ceremony was high. But as Matthew Belloni wrote for Puck: “Mulaney is already committed to several projects in the winter and spring, and Netflix will probably pick up more of his Everybody’s in LA talk show, so he passed due to schedule.”
Mulaney’s declination comes as a particular disappointment to fans who started quietly campaigning for the comedian to take the hosting reins from Kimmel after he turned his presentation for the Oscar for Best Achievement in Sound into a rant on his love of Field of Dreams that went viral. (The good news, of course, is the revelation that more Everybody’s in LA might be coming.)
Fortunately for the Academy, they’ve still got plenty of time to line up a host for the awards, which are scheduled to be handed out on Sunday, March 2, 2025. And while Belloni admitted that he, too, would have loved to see what Mulaney would do with this kind of opportunity, he’s already got a few other ideas in mind.
“We’d all love to see Chris Rock triumphantly return post-Slap, of course, but I doubt he’d do it,” Belloni writes. “The good news is that Kimmel has done such a nice job these past few years that I think it’ll be slightly less difficult to find someone than it was in the Seth MacFarlane/Anne Hathaway–James Franco era. Disney should really squeeze Ryan Reynolds to do it, or ask Steve Martin and Martin Short. Or even better, Martin and Jiminy Glick.”
Reynolds and his Deadpool & Wolverine co-star Hugh Jackman just stood in as guest hosts on Jimmy Kimmel Live! last week, so he’s getting his feet wet. And Martin and Short have always made for a delightful duo (the Only Murders in the Building co-stars have been collaborating for nearly 40 years, including co-hosting Saturday Night Live). But Glick is in his Glickaissance phase. Could this be his year?
What about Letterman?