FAMU grad Will Packer to put his stamp on 94th Oscars telecast tonight

Tonight, FAMU grad Will Packer will get to put his stamp on the 94th Academy Awards ceremony, presented by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, will honor the best films released between March 1 and December 31, 2021.
 
This year’s ceremony marks the first time an all-Black team has produced the show: Packer’s co-producer Shayla Cowan is chief of staff at Will Packer Productions and has worked with him for years, starting as his assistant on the 2010 sequel “Stomp the Yard: Homecoming.”
 
Packer is one of the most prominent Black producers in Hollywood, will revamp the show in his own image and appeal directly to viewers. His films have grossed more than $1 billion worldwide and include 10 No. 1 box-office hits — “Girls Trip,” “Think Like a Man,” “Ride Along” and “Stomp the Yard” among them. His work has ranged from rom-coms to thrillers to cult favorites, but the common thread is stories that reflect and center Black people and their experiences — in other words, stories the academy and Hollywood at large have tended to overlook.
 
In true Packer form, the ceremony will feature HBCU students as trophy presenters, celebrating institutions like the one that nurtured and helped propel him on a worldwide stage — and amid a rash of threats against dozens of the schools.
 
True to Packer former, the show will co-host the show Regina Hall, Wanda Sykes and Amy Schumer, a role that hasn’t been filled since  2018. All three actresses have backgrounds in comedy. It has been 35 years since the Oscars have been hosted by a three-person team.  
 
Packer’s personal imprint didn’t just stop at the details surrounding the telecast of the show, on Friday he announced that the Governors Ball, the glitzy after-party that Wolfgang Puck has catered for more than 25 years, would see the  famed restaurateur team with, a Black-owned culinary collective Ghetto Gastro for the event.  This “breaks boundaries and brings a new flavor to” the storied event, the producer said.
 
“It’s a fantastic way to impact this industry,” he said.  
 
A Hollywood Outsider
Packer didn’t use the traditional route to get to where he is, he’s not a film school grad, he majored in engineering while at FAMU.  He doesn’t live in Los Angeles, he lives in Atlanta. “That either makes me a perfect choice or the worst choice to, and I like to believe the former,” Packer said of his Oscars role. 
 
“I have not built my career within the traditional Hollywood power system. And so I come at it from a very different perspective, and that is true of the way that I approach the biggest night in the industry. I approach it from the perspective of a consumer.”
 
“Look , I’m going to do the best I can to treat this show with the reverence and respect I think it deserves, but I’m also going to try to make an entertaining show.”
 
“In my view, producing the Oscars is like producing the Super Bowl, the NFL can never control who plays in the game,” he says “What they can control is who’s their half-time, pregame show, who’s singing the national anthem to get everybody in. That’s my job.  To get everybody in to a celebrate the most talented people in the world.”
 
The 94th Oscars ceremony officially starts at 8 p.m. ET/5 p.m. PT tonight. The show will air live on ABC and be available to stream online via ABC.com and the ABC app provided the user has a cable subscription.