Hosting a three-and-a-half-hour awards show that always seems to stretch even longer can be a pretty thankless task. Just ask Neil Patrick Harris, host of the 87th Academy Awards. He was a good enough sport to politely declare his retirement from hosting the ceremony after just one appearance, but the subtext was clear: hosting the Oscars kind of sucks.
That doesn’t seem to be deterring a former host from returning for another crack at the gig, though: Variety reports (via Robot Butt) that Chris Rock is in “serious talks” to host the 88th edition of Hollywood’s most masturbatory event next year. Rock previously hosted the Oscars in 2005, and and as Variety points out, that performance “generally got thumbs-up from critics.” Of course, Twitter wasn’t founded until 2006, so at that time the internet had yet to evolve into the fierce gauntlet of opinionated shouting it is today. Since 2005, Jon Stewart (2006, 2008), Ellen DeGeneres (2007, 2014), Hugh Jackman (2009), Steve Martin and Alec Baldwin (2010), James Franco and Anne Hathaway (2011), Billy Crystal (2012), and Seth MacFarlane (2013) have bravely tackled this relatively impossible job, to varying degrees of success.
Variety says an official announcement regarding Rock as host is “expected shortly.” When that happens, we can all start placing our bets on whether the negative response will be of the Seth MacFarlane-esque “too mean to the Kardashians” variety or more of a flat-out “why are they up there?” Franco and Hathaway flavor.