The oddsmakers who figured the trending Jimmy Kimmel had the inside track to host the 2013 Oscars look to have figured wrong.
Unless, that is, Kimmel's got some tap skills he's been keeping under wraps.
The 85th Annual Academy Awards took an apparent turn for the musical verse with the naming Thursday of Craig Zadan and Neil Meron as telecast producers.
Zadan and Meron's joint TV and film credits could supply Mr. Schuester's class with weeks' worth of Glee assignments: Footloose (the original and the remake; Hairspray; the Whitney Houston and Brandy version of Cinderella; Smash; and the Best Picture-winning Chicago.
Rather than Kimmel, Billy Crystal or whichever other comic/prospective Oscar host you can name, Zadan and Meron are linked to the likes of Hugh Jackman, Queen Latifah and John Travolta.
Jackman, who turned in a stellar performance at the 2009 Academy Awards, seems the perfect fit for the 2013 telecast. He's partnered in the past with Zadan and Meron, and, come nomination time, should have a film in the running, a musical, no less: Les Misérables, costarring his old Oscar duet partner, Anne Hathaway.
Les Mis' Oscar cred may be no small thing.
"We have to see who the nominees are this year," Zadan said Thursday in the The Hollywood Reporter. "A lot of the show comes together based on what the movies are."
Latifah, who's hosted with the People's Choice and BET awards, has worked with the producers on Hairspray and the upcoming TV movie remake of Steel Magnolias. And she's likely to be in the mood for a high-profile gig: she's set to launch a new talk show in the fall of next year.
Travolta, given his less-than-stellar PR year, may not seem like someone seeking the spotlight, but Zadon and Meron have won him over before: They cast him in Hairspray. (True, they also tried, but failed to land him for Chicago.)
In any case, the Oscar show's producers are big Travolta fans.
"There's no greater movie musical star," Meron told the Los Angeles Times in 2007.
A more realistic option, perhaps, and one who'd already caught the eye of oddsamakers: Neil Patrick Harris, who's performed at the Oscars, and has been circling the job since his breakout year on the emcee ciruit a few years back.
One star who's officially out: Jimmy Fallon. Earlier this month, Fallon revealed he'd declined an offer to host. The Fallon candidacy came at a time when the Academy, per reports, was trying to woo Saturday Night Live's Lorne Michaels to produce.
So far, Zadan and Meron aren't naming names—not any living ones, anyway. Speaking to E! News' Marc Malkin, Meron called the late Johnny Carson the "king" of Oscar hosts.
The 85th Annual Academy Awards is set for Feb. 24.