Oscars producer Will Packer on the awards controversy: 'I take wild swings'
LOS ANGELES — Eleven days out from the Academy Awards, the show's first-time producer, Will Packer, is running on pure adrenaline. Asked if anything is keeping him up at night as the telecast looms, he laughed. "Everything is keeping me up at night — all of it," he said. "But I'm feeling good, man. I'm excited."
Producing the Oscars isn't exactly a walk in the park under the best of circumstances, but this year has brought unprecedented challenges — and unprecedented controversy.
Hoping to reverse what has been an inexorable slide in the show's ratings, which reached an all-time low with 2021's COVID-19 pandemic-dampened ceremony, the motion picture academy announced last month that eight of the less starry awards will be handed out in the hour before the live telecast begins. Clips from the presentation of those awards — film editing, makeup and hairstyling, original score, production design, sound, documentary short subject, animated short and live-action short — will be later incorporated into the broadcast.
The move sparked fierce blowback from various guilds, industry groups and current nominees like Steven Spielberg and Jane Campion. Last week, more than 70 prominent film professionals — including Oscar winners James Cameron, Kathleen Kennedy, John Williams and Guillermo del Toro — issued a letter urging the academy to reverse the plan, arguing that it would do "irreparable damage" to the Oscars' reputation by relegating some nominees to "the status of second-class citizens."
Charged with revitalizing the Oscars at a time of existential anxiety for the movie business, Packer — whose credits include box
