By Lindsey Bahr, AP Film Writer
The Oscars are aiming to be more like a movie than a television show and enlisting A-list stars like Harrison Ford, Brad Pitt, Halle Berry and Reese Witherspoon to help hand out statuettes.
They'll be joined by the likes of Don Cheadle, Renee Zellweger, Regina King, Joaquin Phoenix, Rita Moreno, Laura Dern, Zendaya, Angela Bassett, Bryan Cranston, Marlee Matlin and last year's best director winner Bong Joon Ho, the show's producers said Monday.
"In keeping with our awards-show-as-a-movie approach, we've assembled a truly stellar cast of stars," said producers Jesse Collins, Stacey Sher and Steven Soderbergh in a statement. "There's so much wattage here, sunglasses may be required."
After delaying two months due to the coronavirus pandemic, the Oscars are forging ahead with an in-person show at Los Angeles' Union Station. It'll be a scaled back affair, with only presenters, nominees and their guest in attendance, but the producers are working to make it a must-see event amid critically low ratings for other awards shows during the pandemic. More talent will be announced in the coming weeks.
The 93rd Oscars will be broadcast live on ABC on April 25 at 8 p.m. Eastern.
A new initiative will allow UK deaf audiences to see captioned films before general release
For once, deaf audiences are being prioritized at U.K. cinemas.
Paramount Pictures UK will be showing their movies with captions the day before general release, meaning deaf and hard of hearing cinemagoers across the country will be able to watch them first.
The distributor is starting with the robot animation "Transformers One" on Oct. 10. Subtitled screenings of Paramount's upcoming films, "Gladiator II," "Sonic the Hedgehog 3" and "The Smurfs Movie," will follow over the next few months.
Rebecca Mansell, chief executive of the British Deaf Association, called the initiative ground-breaking. Deaf, deafened and hard of hearing audiences have been struggling to attend the few available subtitled film showings because they are often scheduled at inconvenient times, she said.
"It fits in with the cinema's needs, but not necessarily when the Deaf community want to go," she said. "The deaf community always feel that they are the last ones to know, the last ones to watch something, the last ones for everything. And now we're going to be the first. It's definitely a really exciting moment."
Around 18 million people in the U.K. are registered as deaf, deafened or hard of hearing, according to the association.
Paramount has also been running deaf awareness training with cinema managers and staff in U.K. cities so that they can better communicate with customers.
Yvonne Cobb, a TV presenter and celebrity ambassador for the British Deaf Association, was running the training at a large cinema in central London's Leicester Square Wednesday.
She said the three-hour training session wasn't enough for staff to become fluent in British Sign Language, but workers were able to learn basic signs, how to interact with deaf... Read More