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Will Jimmy Kimmel hit another post-Oscar home run?

By Lisa De Moraes,February 19, 2013

Last years post-Oscar show snagged Jimmy Kimmel Lives second-biggest… (Richard Cartwright/AP )

Most of the Oscars walk-up blah-blah-blah has been Seth-MacFarlane-is-going-to-bomb-as-host this, and what-were-the-producers-thinking-when-they-cast-MacFarlane? that — with a little how-dare-they-not-nominate-Ben-Affleck-for-best-director thrown in. But on Tuesday, attention turned to Jimmy Kimmel’s post-Oscar plans.

Last year, “Jimmy Kimmel Live: After the Academy Awards” was maybe the most-talked-about thing about the 84th Annual Academy Awards — that and Angelina Jolie’s right leg pulling an Eve Harrington and stealing the show, catapulting it into the meme-o-sphere.

Part of Kimmel’s post-Oscar coup was his premiere of a trailer for “Movie: The Movie” — the most star-studded nonexistent film the world has ever seen. Tom Cruise, George Clooney, Tom Hanks, Martin Scorsese, Helen Mirren, J.J. Abrams, Ben Affleck, Robert Downey Jr., Matt Damon, Jon Stewart, Don Cheadle, Billy Crystal and Ellen DeGeneres were among the stars who, well, starred.

“Movie: The Movie” was billed as a romantic action thriller comedy drama, based on the novel “Push” by Sapphire, with Abrams and Scorsese as directors and Michael Bay as a producer.

Josh Brolin, playing the president of the United States, kissed Edward Norton; Colin Farrell high-fived a sports-playing dog; Gary Oldman made a cameo as a centaur.

Kimmel said he’d set out to “make the biggest, most star-studded movie in the history of American cinema. . . . Something that packs everything moviegoers love into one spectacular motion picture event.”

“M:TM” garnered nearly 20 million views on YouTube and even opened on nearly 6,000 movie screens across the country.

The movie industry being the wellspring of original ideas that it is, a “M:TM” sequel was inevitable. And although it’s no “A Good Day to Die Hard,” the sequel, “Movie: The Movie Twovie” will star Bradley Cooper, Jessica Chastain, Jude Law, Salma Hayek, Samuel L. Jackson and, of course, John Krasinski, because he and Kimmel are BFF neighbors, as we’re plenty sick of hearing.

Last year’s post-Oscar show featured its first sit-down with Oprah Winfrey.

This year’s show will feature Jamie Foxx, Channing Tatum, and “Good Morning America’s” newly-back-after-bone-marrow-transplant host Robin Roberts. Zzzzzzzz.

The 2012 post-Oscar show snagged “Jimmy Kimmel Live’s” second-biggest audience ever — behind only his late-night show’s post-Super Bowl broadcast in 2006.

‘Beyonce’ goes big . . .

Beyonce’s documercial, “Beyonce: Life Is but a Dream,” attracted 1.8 million viewers to HBO for its Saturday 9 p.m. premiere, Nielsen said Tuesday. That’s the biggest audience for an HBO documentary in a decade. Beyonce co-directed the project.

For comparison’s sake, Spike Lee’s 2006 HBO docu, “When the Levees Broke: A Requiem in Four Acts,” premiered with an average of 1.7 million watching.

Insert sad commentary on American TV audience here.

. . . as does ‘Downton’

On a less-depressing note, the Season 3 finale of PBS’s “Downton Abbey” averaged 8.2 million viewers Sunday — nearly 3 million more viewers than those who watched the Season 2 finale in February of ’12.

Season 3 more than quadrupled PBS’s prime-time average during its run and exceeded the season average of the second season by 66 percent.

To read previous columns by Lisa de Moraes, go to washingtonpost.com/

tvblog.