Seth MacFarlane fronts the first official 2013 Oscars poster

Seth MacFarlane’s slipped into his finest tux for the first poster for the 2013 Academy Awards.

Decked out in the black, white and gold colour scheme that’s become an Oscars staple, the poster keeps it simple, and resists the urge to cram in any crude MacFarlane-esque humour.

Somehow, we doubt the funnyman will be playing it quite so reserved on the big night - his TV work ( Family Guy , American Dad! and The Cleveland Show ) is famed for its no-holds-barred humour, and he brought the same vulgar chuckles to his big-screen debut, Ted .

And that shiny little statuette-silhouette in his hand? It could materialise into the real thing, as MacFarlane’s nominated in the Best Original Song category for Ted ’s ‘Everybody Needs A Best Friend’.

We’ve already had a brief taster of MacFarlane’s presenting skills, when he announced the 2013 Oscar nominees with Emma Stone. With his broad appeal and hosting credentials (he can sing, crack jokes, knows his pop culture inside out), could he be the ratings hit the Academy have been looking for?

Check out the poster in full below:

As the one-sheet handily points out, the 85th Academy Awards ceremony takes place on Sunday 24 February 2013.

Check out some of MacFarlane's Oscar TV spots below:

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Matt Maytum is the former Editor of Total Film magazine. Over the past decade, Matt has worked in various roles for TF online and in print, including at GamesRadar+. Bucket-list-ticking career highlights have included reporting from the set of Tenet and Avengers: Infinity War, as well as covering Comic-Con, TIFF and the Sundance Film Festival.