Stephen King Urges Oscars to Cancel, Prompting Backlash
Stephen King wants to banish this year’s Oscars to the dead zone.
King is the latest celebrity to urge the top film Academy to cancel the awards in the wake of the devastating Los Angeles wildfires.
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“Not voting in the Oscars this year,” King wrote on Bluesky, the social platform he joined after ditching X recently. “IMHO they should cancel them. No glitz with Los Angeles on fire.”
And on Friday, King stood by his take, while noting that he understands why many disagree: “I hear what you guys are saying about the Oscars, and how they’re a celebration of life, and the show must go on, blah-blah-blah, so-on-and-so-forth. It all makes a degree of sense, but to me it still feels like Nero fiddling while Rome burns. Or in this case, wearing fancy clothes while LA burns.”
To be clear, the Academy has no intention of canceling the show. As The Hollywood Reporter exclusively reported yesterday, the 2025 Oscars ceremony is still set to take place on March 2.
The case for moving forward with the Oscars goes like this: Canceling an awards show doesn’t really help anyone. But using the massive and global Oscars viewership platform to help raise money for wildfire-related causes would benefit those impacted by the fires. Therefore, any sentiment to cancel the Oscars feels more like an in-the-moment push to end something celebratory rather than a move that would actually be beneficial. Hollywood loves to rally around a noble cause and it’s difficult to imagine the Oscars not going hard in trying to benefit wildfire victims and, also, not appear inappropriate in the wake of the tragedy.
“The prevailing sentiment within the Academy’s leadership,” as THR reported, “is that the show should go on — in a dignified manner that would help to raise funds for and celebrate fire relief efforts.”
Previously, Hacks star Jean Smart likewise suggested canceling the program, which routinely draws 20 million viewers, and suggested donating “the revenue they would have gathered to the victims of the fires and the firefighters.”
Smart’s post received some blowback, as did King’s. Even among his followers in the left-leaning Bluesky, readers largely pushed back on the idea of scrapping the show.
“The [awards show] workers had months, YEARS without pay due to covid, then to union negotiations,” one wrote. “And now the fires. You’re wrong in this one. Support the industry.”
“America needs a good distraction from all the pain and suffering we’re going through on a daily basis,” opined another. “That’s show business. You should know this. The show must go on.”
And by all accounts, it will.
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