U2, who won Best Song for a film on Nelson Mandela—the band’s longtime hero. AFP FILE PHOTO
LOS ANGELES – Irish rock veterans U2 will play their Oscar-nominated song “Ordinary Love” from the movie “Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom” at this year’s Academy Awards, organizers announced Wednesday.
The March 2 performance at the Dolby Theatre in Hollywood will be the first time U2 has played the song live, said Craig Zadan and Neil Meron, producers of the 86th Academy Awards.
The tune is among four nominees for best original song along with “Happy” from “Despicable Me 2,” “Let It Go” from Disney’s animated “Frozen” and “The Moon Song” from futuristic love story “Her.”
The Academy had already announced that Tony-winning singer and actress Idina Menzel will sing “Let It Go” from “Frozen” — the frontrunner for best animated feature — at next month’s awards ceremony.
A fifth song was originally nominated. But “Alone Not Yet Alone” from a low-budget film of the same name, was pulled because its author, an Academy member, had emailed voters about his tune, breaching the prestigious body’s strict rules.
Talk show host Ellen DeGeneres will host this year’s Oscars show, which is a week later than usual, after the Winter Olympics. The Golden Globes were moved two weeks forward, to January 12, to avoid clashing with the Sochi games on television.
The Oscars, the climax of Tinseltown’s annual awards season, are televised live in more than 225 countries and territories around the world.
The theme of this year’s show is movie heroes, whether real-life ones like Gandhi, super heroes like Superman and Batman, or heroic stories such as animated film “The Incredibles” and literary tales like “To Kill a Mockingbird.”
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