By hook or by crook, the gosh darn 2021 Academy Awards (which celebrate the best in cinema in 2020, confusingly) are happening, global pandemic and basically no movies in theaters and weird, widened windows of eligibility and Warner Bros. throwing everyone into a tizzy about the future of cinema be damned. We are getting celebrities in shiny suits and we are giving them golden statues to tell them they did a nice job making movies, dammit! And we're doing it with the hands-on help of a guy who's received some of these golden statues himself: Steven Soderbergh.

Per an official Academy press release, Soderbergh (an Oscar-winner for Traffic) has joined the production team for the 93rd Annual Oscar ceremony, alongside producers Jesse Collins (the Grammy Awards) and regular Soderbergh collaborator Stacey Sher (Contagion). The three gave a joint statement, illustrating just how nervous they are to take on this undertaking:

"We're thrilled and terrified in equal measure. Because of the extraordinary situation we're all in, there’s an opportunity to focus on the movies and the people who make them in a new way, and we hope to create a show that really FEELS like the movies we all love."

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Image via Relativity Media

That all-caps emphasis on "FEELS" is theirs, not mine, and it makes me genuinely excited about what this telecast could look like. It's interesting that only one member of this trifecta has any "live television production" experience, and even then, Collins' CV includes no previous Oscar experience (but it does include the excellently produced Rhythm + Flow). Soderbergh has disrupted all kinds of traditional modes of storytelling before, doing simultaneous theatrical/VOD releases before HBO Max made it cool and crafting dense pieces of film on a dang iPhone. Will he be doing a similar mode of accessible muckraking on these here Oscars? Will we prefer this version to the old, ostentatious way? After so many years in the biz, why is this the thing that makes Mr. Soderbergh "terrified"?

Academy President David Rubin and Academy CEO Dawn Hudson seem less than terrified, sharing this joint statement about their trio of producers: "The upcoming Oscars is the perfect occasion for innovation and for re-envisioning the possibilities for the awards show. This is a dream team who will respond directly to these times. The Academy is excited to work with them to deliver an event that reflects the worldwide love of movies and how they connect us and entertain us when we need them the most." As someone who absorbs all things Oscars even as they disappoint me (Parasite notwithstanding), maybe this will be the year the substance of reinvention actually matches the rhetoric.

The 93rd Annual Academy Awards air on ABC April 25, 2021.