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Jimmy Kimmel Will Host the 2017 Oscars
Finding the right Oscar host is a difficult task, maybe even harder than winning one of the awards. The perfect choice is an entertainer who is most appropriate for the tone of the ceremony and for the vibe of the world in his or her given year. It’s probably for the best to hold off hiring someone until late in the season, as the producers have this year. In 2014 and 2015, the host was named in October, and in 2013 we learned who was emceeing the show as early as August. This year we got all the way to December before Jimmy Kimmel was officially announced as the host of the 89th Academy Awards.
Kimmel will be one of the few hosts to have hardly any movie credits to his name. Most of his roles on the big screen have been as himself (see last year’s Pitch Perfect 2) or just in voice form, including in animated films (the upcoming The Boss Baby) and live-action (Road Trip) and hybrids (The Smurfs 2). His primary job is talk show host, so he follows in the shoes of Ellen DeGeneres, Jon Stewart, David Letterman and Johnny Carson, who hosted the third-most amount of telecasts with five. He has a good shot at being the best of that group, as he has a great rapport with celebrities and a younger general audience.
Kimmel has actually been broadcasting his show Jimmy Kimmel Live! on Oscar night with a post-ceremony special for the past 10 years, always featuring attendees and nominees from the ceremony on the program. So he has the closest thing to experience leading the Academy Awards themselves. He also just hosted the 2016 Emmy Awards a few months ago. We can imagine he’ll make stars in the crowd read mean tweets and will possibly insert himself into movies, a la Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice (see above). Overall, he should be an entertaining host. But we also think that every year, and it’s not always the case.
You can see how he does when the Oscars air live on ABC on February 26, 2017.
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