• "Before My Time" from "Chasing Ice"
  Performed by: TBA
• "Everybody Needs A Best Friend" from "Ted"
  Performed by: Norah Jones
• "Pi's Lullaby" from "Life of Pi"
  Performed by: TBA
• "Skyfall" from "Skyfall"
  Performed by: Adele
• "Suddenly" from "Les Misérables"
  Performed by: Hugh Jackman
  
• 2000s Musicals Tribute (Les Misérables, Dreamgirls, Chicago)
  Performed by: Jennifer Hudson, Catherine Zeta-Jones, Hugh Jackman, Russell Crowe, Anne Hathaway, Amanda Seyfried, Eddie Redmayne, Aaron Tveit, Samantha Barks, Helena Bonham Carter
• James Bond Tribute (Shirley Bassey, Adele, Tom Jones)
• "In Memoriam" tribute
  Performed by: Barbra Streisand
• "Closing Song" (Kristin Chenoweth and Seth MacFarlane)

Beverly Hills, CA (August 23, 2012) – Acclaimed motion picture, television and theater producers Craig Zadan and Neil Meron will produce the 85th Academy Awards, Academy President Hawk Koch announced today. This will be the duo’s first involvement with the Oscars. The 85th Academy Awards will air live on Oscar® Sunday, February 24, 2013.

"Craig and Neil are forward thinkers who bring a unique perspective to the Oscar show," Koch said. "Their enormous collective talent, coupled with their love of film, serves our show perfectly."

"We are very excited to collaborate with Hawk and everyone at the Academy to produce this year's Oscars," said Zadan and Meron. "We hope to utilize our experience in producing features, TV and theater to bring something fresh and special to this incredible awards show. When we filmed ‘The Bucket List,’ we made our own personal bucket list, and producing the Oscars was #1. It’s truly a great honor."

"Craig and Neil have great talent relationships and bring an infectious energy to the production," said Academy CEO Dawn Hudson." They are creative producers in the best sense of the word."

Zadan and Meron served as executive producers on the 2002 Best Picture winner "Chicago," which won Oscars® in 6 of the 13 categories in which it was nominated. Their credits also include the features "Footloose" (2011), "Hairspray" and "The Bucket List." Zadan also produced the original "Footloose" (1984).

Zadan and Meron’s work in television includes the series "SMASH" and such movies as "A Raisin in the Sun" and the upcoming "Steel Magnolias."

For Broadway, they recently produced the Tony Award® winning revivals of "How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying" and "Promises, Promises."

Their work has amassed 73 Emmy® nominations; 12 Tony nominations; and seven Grammy® nominations.

The 85th Academy Awards will be held at the Dolby Theatre™ at Hollywood & Highland Center® in Hollywood, and will be televised live by the ABC Television Network. The Oscar presentation also will be televised live in more than 225 countries and territories worldwide.

BEVERLY HILLS, CA – Don Mischer will direct the 85th Academy Awards telecast, telecast producers Craig Zadan and Neil Meron announced today. This marks the continuation of Don Mischer Productions' multi-faceted relationship with the Academy, which includes producing the Oscars® red carpet pre-show and producing the annual Governors Awards.

"For a very long time, we had always hoped to work with Don Mischer," said Zadan and Meron. 'His talent and reputation are unsurpassed and we're so happy he will be our collaborator on the 85th Academy Awards."

"I am so very excited to be directing the Academy Awards again this year and to be working with creative producers like Craig and Neil," said Mischer. "All of us at Don Mischer Productions are also thrilled to be producing the Oscar® pre-show, and most significantly to continue a wonderfully gratifying relationship with the Academy."

This will be Mischer's third consecutive year as director of the Oscars. He has served as producer as well as director on the 83rd and 84th Academy Awards and was nominated for Emmys® for directing both shows. Last year's Oscars received eight Emmy® nominations, the most for any TV special.

Mischer Productions' Charlie Haykel and Juliane Hare will again produce the Oscar pre-show. The company also returns for the fourth consecutive year to produce the upcoming Governors Awards, alongside Academy governor Cheryl Boone Isaacs.

Mischer's other credits include "We Are One: The Obama Inaugural Celebration at the Lincoln Memorial," "The Kennedy Center Honors," several Super Bowl halftime shows and the opening ceremonies of both Winter and Summer Olympic Games. He has also produced television specials with a wide range of musical performers, including Bruce Springsteen, Beyoncé, Bono, Barbra Streisand, Justin Timberlake and Yo-Yo Ma. Among the many honors Mischer has earned are 15 Emmy Awards, 10 Directors Guild of America Awards, two NAACP Image Awards, a Peabody Award, and the Producers Guild's 2012 Norman Lear Achievement Award in Television.

Academy Awards for outstanding film achievements of 2012 will be presented on Sunday, February 24, 2013, at the Dolby Theatre™ at Hollywood & Highland Center®, and televised live on the ABC Television Network. The Oscar presentation also will be televised live in more than 225 countries worldwide.

It's going to be so weird to have the Oscar nominations announced on a Thursday instead of a Tuesday. And January 10? That seems really early (maybe even the earliest ever?).

Same day as Directors Guild nominations. Will the DGA change the date? No one will care if they are announced on the same day.

The Academy has moved the announcement of Oscar nominations five days earlier than as original planned, and confirmed that electronic online voting will be used this year.

Nominations will now be announced on Thursday, Jan. 10, five days earlier than the original scheduled Jan. 15 announcement. This is the earliest Oscar nominations have ever been announced, stretching the post-nomination, pre-Oscar period (during which awards campaigning is strictly limited) to its longest period in years.

Ballots will be due on Jan. 3, the earliest Academy voters have ever had to vote.

Also read: The Oscars Go Digital -- Finally -- With Online Voting

Voting will be done electronically, but other methods will be available as well. The Academy said it will provide assisted voting stations in Los Angeles, New York and London, as well as paper ballots and a 24-hour phone line to provide assistance.

An extensive study of online voting pushed the announcement of key dates to far later in the year than usual; typically, the Academy announces those dates in March or April, shortly after the previous Oscar show.

It also makes the Academy the last awards organization to announce its timetable, around which most campaign spending is based.

The timetable shortens the time that PricewaterhouseCoopers has to tally Oscar nominating ballots from the usual 10 days down to six. Presumably, online voting will allow PwC to do some of the counting electronically, rather than undertaking the entire complicated "preferential" count by hand, as the company has done in past years.

It also extends the time between the nominations announcement and the beginning of final voting to 29 days, a full 10 days longer than it was at the last Oscars.

Other key dates include Feb. 4 for the Oscar nominees luncheon. New AMPAS president Hawk Koch was known to be an advocate of moving the nominees luncheon into Oscar week, but the Feb. 4 date keeps it where it was, midway between the announcement of nominations and the Oscar show.

The new date for nominations means that Oscar will now announce the same day as BAFTA and the DGA, unless those other groups now change their own announcements.

It also places Oscar nominations before the Golden Globes ceremony, which is scheduled for Jan. 15. 

The key dates:

Friday, November 30, 2012: Official Screen Credits due
Saturday, December 1, 2012: Governors Awards presentation
Monday, December 17, 2012: Nominations voting begins
Thursday, January 3, 2013: Nominations voting ends 5 p.m. PT
Thursday, January 10, 2013: Nominations announced 5:30 a.m. PT, Academy's Samuel Goldwyn Theater
Monday, February 4, 2013: Nominees Luncheon
Friday, February 8, 2013: Final voting begins
Saturday, February 9, 2013: Scientific and Technical Awards presentation
Tuesday, February 19, 2013: Final voting ends 5 p.m. PT
Sunday, February 24, 2013: 85th Academy Awards presentation

From the Academy press release:

In an effort to provide members and the public a longer period of time to see the nominated films, the Academy will reveal the 85th Academy Awards nominations on January 10, five days earlier than previously announced.

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The Directors Guild of America has rescheduled the announcement of its feature-film nominations from Jan. 10 to Jan. 8 to avoid falling on the same day as the recently-moved Oscar nominations, a DGA spokeswoman told TheWrap on Tuesday.

The move is the first example of fallout from the Academy's announcement that its nominations will be revealed five days earlier than originally scheduled. The new Jan. 10 date put the Oscar nominations on the same day as both DGA feature-film nominations and BAFTA nominations, which would likely be buried by the publicity that surrounds the Oscar noms.

Within hours of the Academy's announcement, the DGA told to TheWrap that it had decided to alter its own schedule, moving its feature-film nominations to Tuesday, Jan. 8, and its television and commercial nominations to Wednesday, Jan. 9.

The TV and commercial noms were originally scheduled to have been announced on Jan. 11.

The move will also change the deadline for voting in those categories.

DGA documentary nominations will still be announced on Monday, Jan. 14.