Looks like those wanting to see Angela Bassett hold an Oscar in her hand will have to wait a few more months. The 14th Annual Governors Awards, originally slated for Nov. 18, 2023, will now take place in the new year, as the ceremony has been moved to Jan. 9, 2024 due to the double strike.
It is yet to be determined if the Academy’s other major events, including the March 10th Oscar ceremony, will shift dates due to the ongoing SAG-AFTRA and Writers Guild strikes.
Joining Bassett for the annual Honorary Academy honors are legendary comic actor-writer-director Mel Brooks and editor Carol Littleton. Michelle Satter, founding director of the Sundance Institute’s Feature Film Program, will receive the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award.
Bassett was considered a frontrunner for the supporting-actress Oscar earlier this year for “Black Panther: Wakanda Forever” until Jamie Lee Curtis’ turn in “Everything Everywhere All at Once” gained late momentum to claim the award. (Bassett’s nonplussed reaction to the outcome even became a cultural debate for a hot minute.)
But the Honorary Oscar will be all hers in 2024, citing her decades of outstanding work in cinema, which also includes “Boyz N the Hood,” “Waiting to Exhale,” “Strange Days,” and several notable films by John Sayles, including “Passion Fish” and “Sunshine State.”
Brooks has an Oscar for writing the screenplay to the 1968 comedy “The Producers,” however he has not won the big award since, despite a writing nod for 1974’s “Young Frankenstein” and a songwriting nod for the title song to “Blazing Saddles” (also from 1974). The comedy legend recently turned 97, and is famously an EGOT winner.
Littleton, famously the longtime editor of director Lawrence Kasdan, is an Emmy winner whose only Oscar nomination was for cutting Steven Spielberg’s “E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial.” Her work also includes “Body Heat,” “Silverado,” “Beloved,” and “Margot at the Wedding.”
Satter has been part of the Sundance Institute since its inception in 1981, and founded the now-indispensable Directors and Screewriters Labs, which have launched the careers of everyone from Quentin Tarantino to Gina Prince-Bythewood to Ryan Coogler to Paul Thomas Anderson.
January 2024 is shaping up to be a maelstrom of industry awards, with the recently-moved Primetime and Creative Arts Emmy Awards, Oscar nominations, Golden Globe Awards, Critics’ Choice Awards and Sundance Film Festival all taking place within one month, not to mention various critics’ organizations handing out their annuals.
