Academy Awards stage will be dressed up in golden 1970s glam

“The hosting job of the Academy Awards is already hard enough without the weight or responsibility that comes with this particular one”, Mankiewicz said.

Inarritu, who picked up a second Directors Guild of America award (DGA) in a row and a BAFTA earlier this month, won the Oscar for best picture past year for dark comedy Birdman. On Monday, DiCaprio’s career might not look that different, but Vikander’s probably will.

Here is the full list of Oscar nominations 2016.

To become a member of the academy, you must be invited by the board of governors.

“It’s often been said anecdotally that the only award of merit that has monetary value is the Oscar“, said veteran publicist and awards strategist Tony Angellotti. Michael Fassbender is in top form in “Steve Jobs“, but it appears he will have to wait some time before receiving a statue, and Eddie Redmayne in “The Danish Girl” has literally the most transformative role in the history of cinema, although his chances of Oscar success are not high. “It’s one of the few cause and effect awards of merit that offer monetary gain at some point”.

This year’s best picture nominees boast a handful of films from outside the film academy’s traditional comfort zone, most notably George Miller’s much-nominated post-apocalyptic chase film “Mad Max: Fury Road”. That’s come up before – USC released its umpteenth damning study of the problem this week – but since it’s ricocheting off the only thing, Oscars, that studios care about nearly as much as money, it might actually induce real changes this time. There’s no way to pin down a specific increase that applies to everyone, and it’s also not something that agents and managers will discuss publicly either. It is an awards gala where over 90 per cent voters are whites, so what did you expect?

But the effects aren’t necessarily equal.

55% of those surveyed thought he should win the category for his role in The Revenant, while 34% thought the film should win Best Picture. “But he can’t go for the jugular”, said Montgomery. And while the foreign language film Oscar should quite deservedly go to the innovative and harrowing Holocaust drama “Son of Saul“, just as good is the most genuinely diverse work nominated by the academy this year, “Embrace of the Serpent“. Lenny Abrahamson’s Room is this year’s example. With some members of the African American community lobbying for Rock to step down as host this year, and others suggesting a boycott of the entire production, it’s likely that Rock will set the record straight with his perspective when he graces the stage on Sunday. The Oscars may be about pageantry, tedium and – oh, yeah – honoring the best cinematic efforts of the year, but this season, there’s been an addition to the usual niceties: #OscarsSoWhite. The academy has about 1,500 women and 535 non- white people who are eligible to vote on the Oscars, according to Times estimates. Sometimes it’s even because of the perception that they’re suddenly unattainable.

The ratings for the 2015 Academy Awards were the weakest since 2009, but still, an estimated 65 million people around the world watched the Oscars telecast past year.

“The nomination process is essentially run by, dictated by money and public relations maneuvering”, Mortensen says.