Insert “Let it Go” pun here.
When it was announced that Neil Patrick Harris would be hosting the 87th Academy Awards ceremony, everyone assumed the versatile performer would find a way to work in a flashy showtune song-and-dance number.
After all, Harris has not only put on spectacular shows for three consecutive years as host of the Tony Awards, but he also managed to slip in a song at the 2013 Emmy Awards:
Now we have confirmation that Neil Patrick Harris will indeed be performing a song at the Oscars – and he’s enlisted the talented Frozen songwriters Kristen Anderson-Lopez and Robert Lopez to write what will surely be another memorable piece.
After all, you can joke about “Let it Go” as much as you want, but the truth is that no one is in fact able to let it go, because the song is so damn catchy.
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The “original multimedia, musical sequence” is appropriately titled “Moving Pictures.”
In a statement, Lopez and Anderson-Lopez (whose “Let it Go” won the Oscar last year for Best Original Song) express their enthusiasm about the collaboration:
“We love the Oscars and have always been huge Neil Patrick Harris fans, so when he asked us to write him a song for this year’s show we said, ‘Yes!’ before he could finish the sentence — it’s possible he may have been asking us for something else. We are having so much fun collaborating, and have even enjoyed weaving our experience as Oscar nominees into the song.”
Going by Harris’ track record the musical sequence will feature humorous shout-outs to celebrity guests at the event, self-referential comedy, and of course flashy back-up dancers.
This only makes us more excited to see Harris host the ceremony. We only hope he has more screen-time than Ellen DeGeneres did last year – her bits were hilarious, but half of them were over before we’d realized they’d begun!
Catch up on the 2015 Oscars nominations, and prepare yourselves for a long night when the Academy Awards ceremony kicks off at 7/6 P.M. EST on Feb. 22, 2015.