Security at Sunday’s Oscars has Hollywood Boulevard in lockdown, exactly as Academy Awards organizers and police have long planned.
Around the Dolby Theater, cars with their star-studded passengers are inching towards the ceremony as they pass through a one-mile gated perimeter starting blocks south of Hollywood Blvd. Along the route, the vehicles are swept from top to bottom. Even before a FBI alert on potential Iranian drone attacks on coastal California was made public earlier this week, Oscar attendees were advised to give themselves plenty of time to get to the Conan O’Brien-hosted ceremony to avoid aggravation and last-minute dashes before showtime.
Once nominees and attendees arrive, they will see choppers (along with a certain Goodyear dirigible) in the air over the tented red carpet at Ovation Hollywood. Amidst the fairly strong law enforcement presence, Oscar ticket holders will also encounter police dogs on the red carpet.
And that’s just what’s visible in public.
Behind the scenes, as has been the case for more than a decade now, a high-tech net is in place to monitor chatter, keep eyes on everything, and anticipate what could happen before it does.
Oscar organizers declined comment today on the security measures around the event. However, sources close to the ceremony say that the dogs and choppers deployed, plus the locked-down streets, the SWAT teams and more in the background, are fairly routine. “This is what we do every year, people are just a lot more aware right now,” one insider said. “The war, attacks on religious organizations, it’s very stressful.”
The recent FBI alert on potential Iranian drones attacking California saw “stakeholders ask a lot more questions” and several protocols “tightened up,” a law enforcement official tells Deadline. “We gave everything a re-look, make sure the variables were all taken into account.”
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Sunday, the LAPD advised that its March 13 statement was still the law of the land, so to speak.
To play down any geopolitical eruptions like the U.S. war with Iran, the missive made a distinct point of noting that Oscar security planning was “part of a comprehensive strategy developed months in advance to anticipate challengers, support event operations and maintain the safety of everyone participating in or visiting the Oscars,” promising a “highly visible police presence throughout the Hollywood area.”
“The security’s intense, but it’s intense every year,” an Oscars attendee told Deadline this afternoon after a long trip to the Dolby. “It’s the world we live in now, it’s become kind of normal, I guess,” he added. “As long as everyone’s safe, I’m okay with it.”
Others were less sanguine about the security measures.
“Not saying it’s not necessary, wish they didn’t make Oscars so inconvenient every year,” one attendee texted.
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