Next month’s Academy Awards gala will include a tribute to late Los Angeles Lakers legend Kobe Bryant, who died in a helicopter crash Sunday at the age of 41.
Bryant, who died with his 13-year-old daughter, Gianna, and seven more people in Calabasas, Calif., will be part of the Feb. 9th ceremony’s annual “In Memoriam” montage, Variety is reporting. There also might be a separate tribute outside of the montage, sources told the news organization.
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“We can confirm that he will be acknowledged in the telecast,” a source at the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences told Variety.
Bryant is no stranger to the Oscars.
The retired basketball player won a golden statue in 2018 for the film Dear Basketball in the animated short category. The film is based on a letter that Bryant wrote in 2015 announcing his retirement from basketball. Bryant wrote, executive produced and narrated the movie, which is circulating widely on the Internet since his death. Former Disney animator Glen Keane directed and applied hand-drawn animation to depict Bryant.
The New York Times reported Sunday that the two men bonded over a love of classical composer Beethoven. It was Bryant who approached Keane about working with him after seeing one of his films.
“Kobe was the most passionate man who was led by his heart and his intellect,” Keane told the news organization. “He was a great thinker with an insatiable hunger for learning: As soon as he stepped into animation, he eagerly began soaking up every aspect of it. Working with him was a dream and one of the high points of my career.”
In a moment that is now bittersweet, Bryant credited Gianna with pressing him to try his muscle as a filmmaker. He quoted his daughter as telling him, “Well, Dad, you always tell us to go after our dreams, so man up.”
Bryant spent an illustrious 20-year career with the Lakers before retiring in 2016. Since then, the former shooting guard busied himself inspiring young basketball players around the country and mentoring Gianna in the sport.
On Sunday, Bryant and his daughter were on their way to a basketball tournament in Thousand Oaks, Calif.
READ MORE: After Oscar win, Kobe Bryant wants to advocate for diversity in Hollywood
A team of federal investigators is looking into what caused the crash. The probe is expected to take months.
The beloved Los Angeles Laker, who also was memorialized at the Grammy Awards on Sunday, leaves behind wife Vanessa Laine Bryant, 37, and three surviving daughters, Natalia, 17, Bianka, 3, and Capri, 7-months-old.
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