Daniel Kaluuya, Mila Kunis, Lupita Nyong’o, Naomi Scott, Wesley Snipes and John Travolta will be presenters at the 94th Academy Awards, the show’s producers Will Packer and Shayla Cowan announced today.
This group, the third to be announced, joins stars like Lady Gaga, Chris Rock, Zoë Kravitz, Ruth E. Carter, Lily James, Simu Liu, Rami Malek, Rosie Perez and Yuh-Jung Youn. The producers will continue to announce presenters in the days leading up to the telecast on March 27 on ABC.
Two-time nominee Kaluuya won Best Supporting Actor last year for “Judas and the Black Messiah” and Nyong’o took home Best Supporting Actress in 2014 for “Twelve Years a Slave.” John Travolta has been nominated twice for Best Actor, for “Saturday Night Fever” and “Pulp Fiction.” Kunis, Scott and Snipes all have films due out this year.
The Academy has been under fire ever since it announced that eight crafts categories would be announced before the show and edited into the live broadcast throughout the night. Earlier this week, 75 members of the filmmaking community, including “Nightmare Alley” director Guillermo del Toro, sent a letter to the Academy expressing their displeasure with the decision. This followed the resignation of Oscar-winning sound mixer Tom Fleischman from the Academy.
Some people are holding out hope that the off-air portion of the ceremony will be a non-issue next year, drawing optimism from a sentence that Academy President David Rubin wrote in an email he sent to members when the change was first announced: “Moving forward, we will assess this change and will continue to look for additional ways to make the show more entertaining and more thrilling for all involved, inside the Dolby Theatre and watching from home.”
As del Toro told TheWrap this week, “I’ve talked about it publicly and I’ve talked to people at the Academy about it privately, and I don’t think anything’s going to change. At this point, It’s not about this year anymore. It’s about keeping them from doing it again.”
