The 93rd Oscars have been pushed by two months to April 25 after the coronavirus pandemic shuttered movie theaters and desolate on Hollywood's release calendar, the Academy said in a statement on Monday, 15 June.
With a number of studio blockbusters and indie arthouse movies forced to push back release dates owing to the lockdown due to the coronavirus pandemic, the cut-off date for Oscar-eligible films has also been extended from 31 December, 2020 to 28 February, 2021.
The decision as to whether there will be a live ceremony or a “virtual” presentation has not yet been taken. “Our hope, in extending the eligibility period and our Awards date, is to provide the flexibility filmmakers need to finish and release their films without being penalised for something beyond anyone’s control,” Academy president David Rubin and CEO Dawn Hudson said in a statement.
Monday’s decision was prompted by concerns that a field consisting only of films released in 2020 would not be as broad or competitive as has been seen in the past years.
Previously too the Academy Awards have been postponed following the Los Angeles flood in 1938, assassination of Martin Luther King Jr in 1968 and the shooting of President Ronald Reagan in 1981, but it has never been more than a week.
“For over a century, movies have played an important role in comforting, inspiring, and entertaining us during the darkest of times. They certainly have this year,” said the statement.
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