Al Pacino and Michelle Pfeiffer Will Present at the Oscars (Plus Everything Else You Need to Know)

After a winter barrage of award shows — the Emmys, the Golden Globes, the Grammys — the grandaddy of them all, the Academy Awards, are around the corner. The 96th Oscars may be a coronation for “Oppenheimer,” which comes in with a leading 13 nominations, though other films, including “Barbie,” “Killers of the Flower Moon” and “Poor Things” are in the mix.

Here’s everything you need to know about this year’s show:

WHEN ARE THE OSCARS?

The Oscars will be held Sunday, March 10, at the Dolby Theatre in Los Angeles. The ceremony is set to begin at 7 p.m. EDT — one hour earlier than usual — and be broadcast live on ABC. A preshow will begin at 6:30 p.m. EDT. This is your early reminder to set your clocks accordingly — it’s the first day of daylight saving time in the US.

WHO’S PRESENTING AT THE OSCARS?

Last year’s big acting winners are all coming back to present at the show (a tradition), including Brendan Fraser, Michelle Yeoh, Ke Huy Quan and Jamie Lee Curtis. The academy also announced that “Scarface” co-stars Michelle Pfeiffer and Al Pacino are set to hand out awards as well (no word on whether it’s together or not). Other celebrities set to grace the Dolby stage include Zendaya, Matthew McConaughey, Jessica Lange, Nicolas Cage, Mahershala Ali, Sam Rockwell and Luptia Nyong’o. More names will be revealed as show day gets closer.

ARE THE OSCARS STREAMING?

The show will be available to stream via ABC.com and the ABC app with a cable subscription. You can also watch through services including Hulu Live TV, YouTubeTV, AT&T TV and FuboTV.

WHO’S HOSTING THE OSCARS?

Jimmy Kimmel, who hosted last year’s ceremony, will emcee for the fourth time. That ties him with fellow four-timers Whoopi Goldberg and Jack Lemmon, and leaves Kimmel trailing only Johnny Carson (five), Billy Crystal (nine) and Bob Hope (11) among repeat Oscar hosts. “I always dreamed of hosting the Oscars exactly four times,” said Kimmel.

WHAT’S NOMINATED FOR BEST PICTURE AT THE 2024 OSCARS?

The ten nominees for best picture are: “American Fiction”; “Anatomy of a Fall”; “Barbie”; “The Holdovers”; “Killers of the Flower Moon”; “Maestro”; “Oppenheimer”; “Past Lives”; “Poor Things”; and “The Zone of Interest.”

WHO ARE THE FAVORITES?

Christopher Nolan’s “Oppenheimer” is the frontrunner. Nolan, the best director favorite, is also poised to win his first Oscar. The best actress category could be a nail-biter between Lily Gladstone (“Killers of the Flower Moon”) and Emma Stone (“Poor Things”). If Gladstone were to win, she would be the first Native American to win an Oscar.

Best actor, too, could be a close contest between Cillian Murphy (“Oppenheimer”) and Paul Giamatti (“The Holdovers”). Both would be first-time winners. Giamatti’s co-star Da’Vine Joy Randolph is favored to win best-supporting actress, while Robert Downey Jr. (“Oppenheimer”) is expected to win best-supporting actor. His closest competition is considered Ryan Gosling for “Barbie.”

WHAT’S UP WITH THE ‘BARBIE’ SNUBS?

While “Barbie,” 2023’s biggest box-office hit, comes in with eight nominations, much discussion has revolved around the nominations the film didn’t receive. Greta Gerwig was left out of the directing category and Margot Robbie missed on best actress. In those omissions, some have seen reflections of the misogyny parodied in “Barbie,” while others have noted the tough reception comedies have historically had at the Oscars. The nominations for “Barbie” include best-adapted screenplay (by Gerwig and Noah Baumbach), best supporting actress for America Ferrera and two best song nominees in Billie Eilish’s “What Was I Made For” and the Mark Ronson and Andrew Wyatt composition “I’m Just Ken.”

ARE THERE ANY CHANGES TO THE OSCARS THIS YEAR?

Though recent Oscars have been marked by everything from slaps, envelope snafus and controversies over which awards are presented live during the telecast, this year’s show comes in with no big changes (besides starting an hour earlier). All of the awards are to be broadcast live (though honorary prizes remain separated in the earlier, untelevised Governors Awards). The academy is adding a new award for best casting, but that trophy won’t be presented until the 2026 Oscars.

WHAT ELSE IS THERE TO LOOK FOR?

Composer John Williams is nominated for his record 49th best-score Oscar, for “Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny,” and 54th overall. Godzilla is going to the Oscars for the first time, with “Godzilla Minus One” notching a nomination for best visual effects. And for the first time, two non-English language films are up for best picture: the German language Auschwitz drama “The Zone of Interest” and the French courtroom drama “Anatomy of a Fall.”

Jude Law plays an FBI agent investigating the violent crimes of a white supremacist group in “The Order,” which premieres Saturday at the Venice Film Festival.

An adaptation of Kevin Flynn and Gary Gerhardt’s nonfiction book “The Silent Brotherhood,” Nicolas Hoult was cast as Robert Jay Mathews, the charismatic leader of the group which was considered the most radical hate group since the Ku Klux Klan. Their crimes, including bank robberies and armored car heists that the group was using to fund an armed revolution, led to one of the largest manhunts in FBI history, in 1983, according to The AP.

“What amazed me was it was a story I hadn’t heard about before,” said Law, who also produced. “It like a piece of work that needed to be made now.”

He added: “It’s always interesting finding a piece from the relative past that has some relationship to the present day.”

Law made the trip to Italy with his director, Justin Kurzel, and co-stars Hoult, Jurnee Smollett and Tye Sheridan for the premiere.

His character, called Agent Huss, is an amalgam FBI agent and not based on a specific person. This, they said, was important for positioning him within this story.

“He represents an awful lot of us,” Law said. “He felt his hardest work was behind him and in fact he had his biggest battle ahead of him.”

Kurzel, an Australian filmmaker known for the 2015 adaptation of “Macbeth” with Michael Fassbender, said he’d always wanted to make an American film in the vein of dramatic thrillers from the 1970s like “The French Connection,” “Mississippi Burning” and “All the Presidents’ Men.” He tried to make this film with the classic simplicity he admired in those classics.

Hoult felt it was a “difficult story to tell and difficult characters to inhabit,” but praised his director for helping to create a safe and creative environment as they explored the darkness of Mathews. He’d just recently learned, on the boat over to the Lido, that Kurzel had told Law to actually follow him around one day to get into character.

“The first time we spoke was in the first scene we interact,” Hoult said. “It gave a great energy.”

And all were struck by the parallels to today. Though no one wanted to comment directly on the upcoming U.S. presidential election, the film, they hope, speaks for itself.

“The history of America is very complex,” Smollett said. “This level of bigotry is not new and it has existed in our nation since it was founded. As artists we get to hold a mirror up to society....explore the very complex sides of humanity, the ugliness, the darkness in order for us to learn from it and hopefully not repeat it.”

“The Order” is playing in competition at Venice, alongside “ Maria,” “ Babygirl,” “The Room Next Door," “Queer” and “Joker: Folie à Deux.”

Vertical Entertainment will release the film in theaters later this year.

Al Pacino and Michelle Pfeiffer Will Present at the Oscars (Plus Everything Else You Need to Know)