Oscars 2016: Chris Rock makes New Year’s Eve joke in first promo

The 2016 Academy Awards are going to be airing on ABC starting on Sunday, February 28, and the network has officially now decided that now is the time to get their promotional efforts in gear.

The promo below featuring none other than host Chris Rock is the first one that has been formally released at the moment by the network, and it’s funny enough. It was originally a part of the New Year’s Eve lineup, which is why he makes a joke comparing festivities of the night to the majority of the people who will actually be attending the Oscars in Hollywood. Nobody’s really going to watch the show because of one promo, but this certainly does not do anything to turn viewers away.

For the most part, we’d say that our feeling is of optimism towards the upcoming show. Rock’s a genuinely great performer, and we really liked the Oscars when he last hosted many years ago. The challenge for him is strictly that we’re a cynical generation, and almost everyone will be chomping at the bit for him to fail so that they can write some terrible reviews of him. This is something that Seth MacFarlane did some meta-commentary on in the past, but his problem was that he was actually not good enough to avoid some of that after the fact.

Given the possible Best Picture nominees, the Oscars could really use Chris to help give the show that extra spark. It’s certainly possible that “Inside Out” and “Star Wars: The Force Awakens” get snubbed, leaving us with a field of less-than-popular movies.