Oscars to leave Hollywood in 2029: Academy

The Oscars will leave Hollywood after celebrating their centenary, organizers said yesterday (26 March), as they announced a long-term deal to hold the gala in central Los Angeles.

The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences said the ceremony, the most important night of the year for the global film industry, would leave the Dolby Theatre on the Hollywood Walk of Fame after 2028.

The 2029 edition will instead be held at the Peacock Theater, part of the vast LA LIVE complex, next to the Crypto.com Arena, home to the Los Angeles Lakers.

"For the 101st Oscars and beyond, the Academy looks forward to closely collaborating with (owners) AEG to make LA LIVE the perfect backdrop for our global celebration of cinema, both for our live in-theater audience and for film fans around the world," Academy CEO Bill Kramer and President Lynette Howell Taylor said.

The 10-year deal with AEG comes as the ceremony leaves network television in the United States, to be broadcast instead worldwide by YouTube.

It also marks an end to a decades-long run for the ceremony at the Dolby, which is just a stone's throw from the Roosevelt Hotel, where the very first Oscars were handed out in 1929.

While Hollywood is synonymous with the Oscars, the ceremony has not always been held there.

Stars have previously descended on a number of venues in the downtown area, and for much of the 1960s, the ceremony was hosted in the beachside city of Santa Monica.

At this year's awards, held on 15 March, Paul Thomas Anderson's "One Battle After Another" — a wild tale of leftist revolutionaries, white supremacists and immigrant detention centers — was crowned as best picture.