Entertainment

Eddie Murphy will no longer host Oscar telecast

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LOS ANGELES — Eddie Murphy is dropping out as the host of the Oscars telecast, the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences said Wednesday, just one day after the show’s producer, Brett Ratner, stepped aside amid a storm of criticism over his use of an anti-gay slur.

The hasty departures represented an embarrassing collapse of the Academy’s plans with less than four months before the ceremony, and left it scrambling to fill key roles on a show that is one of the most elaborately staged on television.

Mr. Ratner, who was named the Oscar co-producer on Aug. 4, resigned on Tuesday morning because of the furor provoked by his public use over the weekend of an anti-gay slur, and a subsequent, salacious discussion of his own sexual habits on Howard Stern’s radio program.

Full Story: Eddie Murphy drops out of Oscars telecast