Oscars in trouble: will the 2025 show be cancelled?

In the aftermath of the LA fires, there are calls to scrap the annual awards ceremony for the first time in its 96-year history.

Emma Stone with her best actress Oscar last year. Picture: The Mega Agency/The Times

The Bafta nominations are out. And the papal thriller Conclave received a huge haul, as did the historical drama The Brutalist and the wacky Mexican-set mobster musical Emilia Perez.

It means that movie awards season is officially in full swing, and in just six weeks all eyes will be on Los Angeles, and on Oscar night, and the likes of Adrien Brody, Cynthia Erivo and Timothee Chalamet, and a chance to celebrate the blinding glitz, the delicious glamour and the fabulous affluence of the world’s entertainment capital, from the Pacific Palisades right down to … Ah, yes, I see.

The Oscars, in short, are in trouble. The LA wildfires, with their grimly growing death toll and legions of traumatised evacuees (more than 150,000 so far), have made the prospect of staging the usual preening decadence of Oscar night (set for March 2) almost inconceivable. The ceremony seems so anathema to the shell-shocked mood in LA that there are calls for the show to be cancelled.

Meanwhile, apparently, the official Academy Awards committee – including Tom Hanks and Meryl Streep – is monitoring the situation daily, deciding whether or not to pull the plug on a show that, by its very nature, can only be tone-deaf to the city’s suffering.

Wildfires have devastated parts of Los Angeles and displaced 150,000 people. Picture: Getty Images

There is precedent, with a raft of cancelled entertainment events and postponements due to the fires. These include the Bafta Tea Party, a riotous knees-up and key awards season staging post that was scheduled for the Beverly Hills Four Seasons Hotel last Saturday but was axed rather than postponed because, said Bafta, its “thoughts are with everyone impacted”.

The LA premiere for the Robbie Williams biopic Better Man was also cancelled, although that doesn’t quite explain why the movie became an instant box-office flop (just over $US1 million ($1.6m) returns on the first weekend on a $US110 million budget). The announcement of the Oscar nominations has been twice delayed so far (it is now scheduled for January 23), as has the Critics’ Choice awards ceremony. Even the fairytale princess of all California, the Duchess of Sussex, has been forced to postpone her new Netflix lifestyle series, With Love, Meghan.

And yet. The Oscar ceremony is the pre-eminent Hollywood symbol. It is stubbornly resistant to the very idea of cancellation. It has never happened in the show’s 96-year history. When the 9/11 attacks killed nearly 3000 people, what did the subsequent Oscars do? Shut down? Postpone? Revamp? Nope. They sent Tom Cruise out on stage to lecture a suitably cowed audience with this gem. “What about a night like tonight?” the Cruiser said at the top of the show. “Should we celebrate the joy and magic that movies bring? [big dramatic pause] Dare I say it? More than ever!”

Cruise was followed by the appearance of (according to the host Whoopi Goldberg) the “New York landmark and movie icon” Woody Allen. Cue lengthy standing ovation. Interesting. They eventually cancelled Woody, but not the show.

Even in 2018, after the true horror of the Harvey Weinstein scandal was exposed, and Hollywood was revealed to be a place of brutal exploitation for so many women, how did the academy react? It let Frances McDormand hector all the female nominees into standing up awkwardly in the auditorium and basically giving themselves a half-clap for still being there, in one piece, at the most fabulous night in the known universe.

It was no surprise to anyone, then, that when Covid came along and killed 1.2 million US citizens the Oscars was certainly not going to stop. They held the socially distanced 2021 ceremony at Los Angeles’ Union Station. There was a strange forced gaiety to the night, culminating in the sight of poor Glenn Close being strongarmed into a “raucous” performance of the Da Butt dance.

Ralph Fiennes in Conclave, which has been tipped for several awards.

So cancellation seems highly unlikely, and I suspect that Hanks and Streep are very much aware of this even as they survey the situation daily. What’s more likely is a fundraising “telethon” full of sombre faces and speeches about the true price of movie art. The Desperately Seeking Susan actor Rosanna Arquette suggested the idea in a recent interview with Variety, saying, “This year, it’s not just about celebrating art. It’s about using art to rebuild, inspire and help those who need it most.”

And this, of course, is the rub. The LA fires have become a celebrity story. We know that Mel Gibson, Paris Hilton and Top Gun: Maverick’s Miles Teller have all lost their homes. We know that Demi Moore, fresh from her Golden Globes best actress win for her horror movie The Substance, had to round up her nine dogs and flee the fires to the safety of the exclusive Beverly Hills L’Ermitage hotel. We know too that Hollywood’s finest are having their Ozempic and Botox shots delivered to their new hotel-based digs.

And so any fundraising telethon will have to turn itself inside out to clearly delineate the difference between those in genuine need and an ensemble of the multi-millionaire elite with buildings insurance, New York apartments and summer villas on the French Riviera.

Adrien Brody and Felicity Jones in The Brutalist, also expected to be a winner this awards season. Picture: Alamy

As a film critic, I have spent lots of time in Hollywood. Everyone seems to agree, though often in an affectionate way, that it’s a vaguely hellish place.

And it’s why the movie community has repeatedly envisaged its own destruction in Hollywood staples such as Earthquake, Volcano, 2012, San Andreas and Battle: Los Angeles.

I suspect these films will be repurposed for a rousing, though suitably sombre “LA, we love you” montage come Oscar night.

And that’s because these are not just complex expressions of a city’s underlying self-hatred. They are joyful and magical movies. And should we celebrate the joy and magic that movies bring, even after a natural disaster has killed dozens and made tens of thousands of people homeless? Dare I say it? More than ever.

The Times