America Ferrera to Serve as Presenter at This Year’s Oscars

Win or lose, America Ferrera will be taking the Oscars stage…

The 39-year-old Honduran American actress, who earned her first-ever Academy Awards nod this year for her performance in Barbie, will serve as a presenter at Sunday’s Oscars.

She’s part of a roster of new presenters that includes Emily Blunt, Cynthia Erivo, Sally Field, Ryan Gosling, Ariana Grande, Ben Kingsley, Melissa McCarthy, Issa Rae, Tim Robbins, Steven Spielberg, Mary Steenburgen, Anya Taylor-Joy, Charlize Theron, Christoph Waltz and Forest Whitaker.

They join previous announced presenters Bad Bunny, Chris Hemsworth, Dwayne Johnson, Michael Keaton, Regina King, Jennifer Lawrence, Kate McKinnon, Rita Moreno, John Mulaney, Catherine O’Hara, Octavia Spencer and Ramy Youssef, Mahershala Ali, Nicolas Cage, Jamie Lee Curtis, Brendan Fraser, Jessica Lange, Matthew McConaughey, Lupita Nyong’o, Al Pacino, Michelle Pfeiffer, Ke Huy Quan, Sam Rockwell, Michelle Yeoh and Zendaya.

The Oscars will be broadcast live on March 10 ceremony from the Dolby Theater in Hollywood.

Jimmy Kimmel is returning to host the ceremony for a fourth time.

ABC, which has aired the Oscars since 1976, is televising the show live starting at 7:00 pm ET/4:00 pm PT — an hour earlier that usual. The network, which has begun to use the Oscars as a lead-out to showcase its top programming, will follow its coverage of the live ceremony with an original episode of Abbott Elementary.

ABC’s time tweak also means that its annual pre-show will now run for 30 minutes — instead of the usual 90 — beginning at 6:30 p.m. ET/3:30 p.m. PT. As per usual, the main Oscar telecast will be rebroadcast in the Pacific Time zone in primetime after the live presentation.

Raj Kapoor will serve as showrunner and executive producer of the 96th Oscars, with Molly McNearney and Katy Mullan executive producers. Hamish Hamilton is directing.

Gerrison Machado to Star in Amazon Prime’s Global Thriller “The Power”

Gerrison Machado has the power

The Brazilian American actor has been cast in Amazon Prime Video’s The Power, a 10-part global thriller based on Naomi Alderman’s bestselling novel of the same name.

The project hails Chernobyl producer Sister and Emmy-winning The Handmaids Tale director Reed Morano.

Machado, who will be a series regular, joins a cast of newcomers that includes Rob DelaneyAlice EveEdwina Findley, Arichi Rush, Pietra Castro and Zrinka Cvitešić.

In The Power all teenage girls in the world suddenly develop the power to electrocute people at will. It’s hereditary, it’s inbuilt, and it can’t be taken away from them. The Power follows a cast of remarkable characters from London to Seattle, Nigeria to Moldova, as the Power evolves from a tingle in teenagers’ collarbones to a complete reversal of the power balance of the world.

In addition to Machado, Rush, Castro and Cvitešić join The Power cast as series regulars.

Delaney, Eve and Findley will recur as Tom, Kristen and Helen, respectively.

The newly added stars will act opposite Tim Robbins, Leslie Mann, John Leguizamo, Eddie Marson, Daniela Vega and Auli’i Cravalho.

Also joining the cast in recurring roles are Jacob Fortune-Lloyd, Sam Buchanan, Juliet Cowan and Simbi Ajikawo (aka Little Simz.)

del Toro to Receive Heart of Sarajevo Award at the Sarajevo Film Festival

Benicio del Toro has a little extra heart…

The 48-year-old Puerto Rican actor, an Academy Award and Golden Globe winner, will receive the Heart of Sarajevo Award for his contribution to the art of cinema at this year’s Sarajevo Film Festival.

Benicio del Toro

Previous recipients for the award, which was designed by French designer, filmmaker and festival patron Agnes B, include Angelina Jolie, Gael Garcia Bernal and Steve Buscemi.

del Toro will present Fernando Leon de Aranoa’s drama A Perfect Day, in which he has a starring role alongside Tim Robbins and Olga Kurylenko, at the festival’s open-air screening venue, where del Toro will receive the award in front of a 3,000-strong crowd. The film premiered in Directors’ Fortnight at the Cannes Film Festival.

The actor will also hold a master class for the participants of Talents Sarajevo, a networking and training platform for emerging film professionals from South-East Europe and the Southern Caucasus.

del Toro won an Academy Award for supporting actor for his role in Steven Soderbergh’s Traffic, and an Oscar nomination for his work in Alejandro Gonzales Inarritu’s 21 Grams.

Reteaming with Soderbergh to star in Che, the biography of Che Guevera, del Toro’s performance won him the best actor award at Cannes in 2008.

Del Toro can be seen next starring in Denis Villeneuve’s Sicario, alongside Emily Blunt and Josh Brolin, which is scheduled for a September 18 release by Lionsgate in the U.S.

Morales Lands Presidential Role on HBO’s Pilot “The Brink”

Esai Morales’ next project will have him on the brink of political greatness…

The 51-year-old Puerto Rican actor has landed a co-starring a role in the HBO pilot The Brink.

Esai Morales

Directed by Jay Roach from a script by Roberto Benabib and Kim Benabib, The Brink is an epic dark comedy focusing on a geopolitical crisis and its effect on three disparate and desperate men: U.S. Secretary of State Walter Hollander (Tim Robbins); Alex Coppins (Jack Black), a lowly Foreign Service officer; and Zeke Callahan (Pablo Schreiber), an ace Navy fighter pilot.

Morales will portray Julian Navarro, the President of the United States.

While the U.S. is yet to elect a Hispanic president, that has been a popular trend on television that has included Jimmy Smits’ Matt Santos on The West Wing and Blair Underwood’s Elias Martinez on The Event.

Morales, who most recently co-starred on the second season of Starz’s Magic City, recently wrapped a supporting role in George Lopez’s feature La Vida Robot and has a recurring role on CBSCriminal Minds.

Alba Starring in IFC’s New Original Comedy “The Spoils of Babylon”

Jessica Alba is Babylon-bound.

The 32-year-old half-Mexican American actress has joined the cast of IFC’s new original comedy The Spoils of Babylon, starring Will Ferrell.

Jessica Alba

A parody of epic television mini-series, The Spoils of Babylon is produced by Funny or Die and executive produced by Ferrell,

Along with Ferrell and Alba, the cast includes Val Kilmer, Tobey Maguire, Haley Joel Osment, Michael Sheen, Tim Robbins and Kristen Wiig.

“This amazingly talented cast will give this decadent genre its due respect,” said Jennifer Caserta, president and general manager of IFC. “Never before has a parody of a mini-series been more poised for showers of accolades.”

The Spoils of Babylon is a television adaptation of a best-selling epic novel by fictional famous author Eric Jonrosh (Ferrell) whose library spans 57 best sellers in 85 different languages. Jonrosh’s other titles include: The Spoils of Galaxy 7, The Spoils of Grasping for God, The Spoils of the Sahara, The Spoils of the Singing Night Squirrel, The Spoils of the Weeping Falcon and The Spoils Beneath the Sea.

“I’m thrilled my masterwork is finally making it to the screen, albeit the small screen. Although I guess these days people have pretty big screens in their homes but still not as big as “the big screen.” I mean, some people who have home theaters might have screens that big, but most wouldn’t, at least that’s what I would imagine. Still, I’m thrilled, and I personally DO have a giant screen TV so….” trailed off Jonrosh in a quote that was dictated over the phone from his yacht The Super Bard, anchored off his personal island in the Caspian Sea.

The Spoils of Babylon, a century-spanning saga, chronicles the sexy and dramatic lives of the Morehouse family, led by Jonas Morehouse (Robbins), his daughter Cynthia (Wiig) and her adopted brother Devon (Maguire) who made their fortune in the oil business. The series takes viewers from the oil fields of Texas to boardrooms in New York City, through war torn battlefields and velvet-sheeted bedrooms.

Cynthia and Devon’s unbridled and taboo passion for one another cannot be prevented. Add in Cynthia’s evil son Winston (Osment), her put upon husband Chet Halner (Sheen), and Devon’s new love interest Dixie Mellonworth (Alba), and the booze, the pills, more passion, more pills and the heartache, and you have a mercurial potboiler. Then add in illegal arms deals, international espionage, the Shah of Iran (Ferrell), and two US Army Generals (Kilmer, Steve Tom) and it begins to overflow with boiling liquid in a pot on a hot stove that is operational.

Production began June 2 in Los Angeles. Six, half-hour episodes will premiere on IFC in early 2014.