Covid-19: Oscars announces new date for the Award Ceremony

The management of the 2021 Oscars ceremony has announced a new date for the event.

Due to the coronavirus pandemic, Oscars originally scheduled for February 28 was shifted to April 2021.

The ceremony for film’s highest honours will now take place on April 25, 2021, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences disclosed in a statement.

The Academy in its statement signed by President David Rubin and Academy Chief Executive Dawn Hudson also extended the deadline by which movies must be released in order to be eligible for an Oscar nomination to Feb. 28, 2021, from Dec. 31, 2020.

The statement read: “Extending the eligibility period and our Awards date, is to provide the flexibility filmmakers need to finish and release their films without being penalised for something beyond anyone’s control,” said in a statement.

“The production shutdown meant that many filmmakers feared their movies would not be finished by the usual year-end Oscar eligibility deadline.

“Dozens of other movie releases have been moved to 2021.

“It was only the fourth time in the 93-year history of the Academy Awards that the date has been changed; in 1938, due to floods in Los Angeles, in 1968 because of the assassination of civil rights leader Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., and in 1981 after the attempted assassination of then-President Ronald Reagan.”

Most production of Hollywood movies are not expected to resume until September due to COVID-19 pandemic.