At the 95th Academy Awards ceremony on Sunday, Melissa McCarthy and Halle Bailey appeared onstage to talk about the long, storied history of Disney, and to introduce a trailer for their upcoming live-action remake of 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:The Little Mermaid.
If you’re more interested in gaming than movies (and given our site’s name, that seems likely) this may not seem strange at all. Gaming’s biggest awards show, 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:The Game Awards, is all about showing new trailers for upcoming games. Over the course of the show, you’ll hear the announcement that you're about to watch a “World Premiere” far more often than you’ll hear a winner giving a speech. Though players are somewhat invested in seeing their favs win big, they’re far more interested in seeing if BioWare will finally show gameplay for 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Dragon Age: Dreadwolf or if they'll get a tease for the next game from Rockstar.
The structure of the show encourages that. When one of the winners, God of War Ragnarok’s Christopher Judge, 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:dared to go long on his speech, Geoff Keighley made several jokes at his expense across the rest of the night. Keighley clearly wasn't expecting winners to take the awards portion of his awards show all that seriously, as evidenced by TGA apparently having to scramble to find play-off music, which didn't begin until six minutes into Judge’s eight minute speech. Why would anyone give a long speech? The Game Awards seemed to say by its lack of preparation. These awards don't matter.
Though showing trailers at awards shows is the norm in gaming, it has historically been unthinkable at the Oscars. , movie ads weren’t even allowed to air at any point during the telecast's commercial breaks to avoid the appearance that the Academy was putting a golden finger on the scale. That changed 15 years ago when the Oscar board voted to overturn the half-century old rule. Debuting a trailer during the actual ceremony, and taking time that could be devoted to the winners in smaller categories who had their moment of recognition cut short by music, is a step further than that, though. The Oscars seem to be following in The Game Awards footsteps, moving toward prioritizing hype for future products over a celebration of the work from the past year.
But it's worse than that. The Game Awards doesn't develop or publish video games. For all its faults, TGA is an independent organization that works with all of the big publishers as well as smaller studios to secure world premieres for its livestream. Though he clearly has a special place in his heart for 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Hideo Kojima,✱ Keighley is an enthusiast for gaming as a me൲dium, not for any specific company.
But the Academy has an exclusive deal to air the Oscars on ABC. ABC is owned by Disney. Though the Academy has avoided appearing to endorse any movies for decades, Disney doesn't have any such concerns. Last year, , or risk having the broadcast canceled entirely. The corporation used the extra time that was freed up by dropping those pesky awards to host the first live performance of We Don't Talk About Bruno, which wasn't even the song from Encanto nominated for Best Original Song. By airing a trailer for The Little Mermaid during the ceremony, Disney is sending a loud and clear message: it doesn't have to play by the rules. To be fair, the show also included a montage on the history of Warner Bros., but that was in recognition of the studio's upcoming centennial, not a dedicated ad for Shazam: Fury of the Gods.
Disney has long been concerned with synergy across its brands, prioritizing films that can conceivably be turned into theme park rides and merchandise. By treating the Oscars as an opportunity to screen its big new trailer for a captive audience, it's doing the same thing. Hollywood's biggest night may be an opportunity for performers like Michelle Yeoh, Ke Huy Quan, Brendan Fraser, and Jamie Lee Curtis to enjoy a moment of recognition among their peers. But, for Disney, it's just another opportunity to boost its portfolio.