Deadline’s Oscars Live Blog

Hollywood, and Deadline’s live blog, are back for the 96th Academy Awards. The sunny skies, and the fact that the 10 Best Picture nominees include several that audiences have actually seen, bodes well for the festivities. Jimmy Kimmel is back as host, and because Donald Trump remains former president, there is every chance that the Red States won’t consider the event polarized and worth watching … all signs point to a ratings rebound.

The evening isn’t as anticlimactic as were the Emmys, where the only surprise is the event was entertaining despite a lack of suspense over who will win. Oppenheimer seems a decided favorite for Best Picture, and the biggest question is whether the film puts Universal past a three-way tie for most Oscars. Those were the seven that The Sting (1973), Out of Africa (1985) and Schindler’s List (1983) each won. Uni was the international distributor of Shakespeare in Love (1998), which also won seven. But many believe that Oppenheimer, which has 13 noms, will break the record and collect eight Golden Guys.

The suspense comes in the Best Actress category, where Killers of the Flower Moon’s Lily Gladstone is up against Emma Stone for Poor Things. If Gladstone wins, she will be the first Native American actress to claim Oscar gold. She grounded and served as the conscience for Martin Scorsese’s epic. For Stone, a win would mark her second, and this time we watched her character progress from a woman implanted with the brain of an infant mature, including a sexual awakening that you have to see to believe, in Yorgos Lanthimos’ revisionist Frankenstein tale.

Joining Mike Fleming Jr on this live blog is his usual sparring partner, Joe Utichi, who turned his Oppenheimer AwardsLine cover story into English (“Thank you Joe and AwardsLine team for the grammatical triage,” says Mike). We’ll also have cameos from our awards expert, Pete Hammond, and Baz Bamigboye, who are both in the room. It should be fun. We’re evolving as live bloggers and this time we launch Stump The Hammond, dispersing factual and irreverent Oscar trivia questions to a man whose head is filled with Oscar lore and history.