Gilbert Cates will return once again next year to produce the annual Academy Awards® telecast. Cates will captain the 78th Oscar telecast scheduled for Sunday, March 5, 2006.
His appointment was announced by Academy President Sid Ganis today at a luncheon gathering of 75 current and former governors of the Academy held at the Bel Air Hotel.
Cates has produced more Oscar shows than any other person, with a dozen telecasts to his credit since 1990.
“Even with twelve shows in his past, Gil remains extraordinarily creative and ready and willing to give innovation a try,” Ganis said. “And the rest of us are a little more comfortable with Gil trying new ways to present the evening, because he knows exactly what’s at stake.”
Cates’ previous outings as producer have garnered 92 Emmy nominations and 21 Emmy Awards for his telecasts. Cates won the Emmy himself in 1991 for producing the 63rd Annual Academy Awards telecast.
“I’m delighted that Sid has asked me back for a thirtheenth ‘at bat’ as producer of a show that I love to do,” said Cates. “Much of the fun of producing this live telecast is the pleasure of working with people that I love and respect.”
Cates recently completed a three-year term on the Academy’s Board of Governors representing the directors branch (a position he previously held for nine years from 1984 to 1993). He also served as dean of UCLA’s School of Theater, Film and Television for seven years and is a former two-term president of the Directors Guild of America. For the past eleven years Cates has served as producing director of UCLA’s Geffen Playhouse, for which he received the Jimmy Doolittle Award for Outstanding Contribution to Los Angeles Theater.
In addition to his theater work, Cates has had a distinguished career in both motion pictures and television. He produced and directed I Never Sang for My Father (1970), a film which earned three Academy Award nominations, and directed Summer Wishes, Winter Dreams (1973), which collected two more Oscar nominations.
Cates’ accolades as Oscar Show producer are among a long roster of television credits. He earned an Emmy nomination as director of the 1991 television movie, Absolute Strangers, starring Henry Winkler. His credits, under his Cates/Doty Productions banner, also include A Death in the Family (2002), Collected Stories (2002), Innocent Victims (1996); 1990’s critically-acclaimed Call Me Anna, the telefilm based on Patty Duke’s autobiography; the Emmy-nominated Do You Know the Muffin Man? (1990); Confessions: Two Faces of Evil (1993); Fatal Judgment (1988); Consenting Adult (1984), for which he earned an Emmy nomination; and Hobson’s Choice (1983).
Academy Awards for outstanding film achievements of 2005 will again be presented live by the ABC Television network from the Kodak Theatre at Hollywood & Highland.
