Conan O’Brien Reveals He Almost Opened Oscars 2025 With Wicked, Dune and Conclave Parody: ‘We Kind of Honed It’

Conan O’Brien gets candid about the opening of 2025 Oscars. Reveals the original idea involved parodying nominees. Read on to know more.

Written by Apoorva Rastogi , Entertainment Journalist

Updated on Mar 13, 2025 | 06:26 PM GMT | 27.8K

Conan O'Brien at 2025 Oscars (Getty Images)

Conan O'Brien earned rave reviews from netizens for his Oscars hosting gig this year. From his witty remarks about Emilia Perez to the Dune worm playing in the Orchestra, the comedian's monologue was a hit, especially the opening sequence, which set the tone for the rest of the evening.

For people who missed it, O'Brien parodied the very famous and grotesque scene from the movie The Substance. The host crawled out of the back of Demi Moore in the opening bit of the awards show, which for a change earned a laugh from the audience instead of the terrified gasps the scene had gotten from movie-watchers when they saw Margaret Qualley's character spawn out in the film.

However, according to Conan, many more movies nominated that night were supposed to be included in the bit. On his podcast, Conan O'Brien Needs a Friend, he revealed that he was going to "goof on all the movies." He explained the 4-minute bit that could have been, saying "It starts with me and I'm in Wicked and I'm all green, finishing 'Defying Gravity' or one of those songs. And I finish it and then you cut to the next thing, which is Gladiator II and 'clang, clang, clang' with swords and you see that I'm a gladiator but then you notice that I'm still green."

The former late-night host says, "You go on to Conclave and you see people voting with their ballots and one of the hands is still green." Amusingly, Conan was then going to show up in Dune Part 2 since it was covered in green. He added the idea was "that the dye wouldn’t come off and we had to shoot it in one day."

Writer Mike Sweeney, who has worked with O'Brien for a long time, reveals that even though they "loved" this "cold-open" it was "hammered out before the (L.A.) fires and even after that we kind of honed it."

Well, even when the host had to leave a lot of his ideas on the chopping board before the show, from the response from the audience, we can only assume they did not feel disappointed.