After record low viewership last year, the 2019 Academy Awards producers hired popular comedian Kevin Hart to host the event and sought to shorten the ceremony to a brisk three hours. Both ideas sparked uproar.

Hart stepped down from his hosting role after backlash when past homophobic tweets and comments resurfaced. Instead, over 25 Hollywood luminaries including Whoopi Goldberg, Tina Fey and Jennifer Lopez will take to the stage to present the nominees.

Meanwhile, industry leaders have condemned the event's reported decision to give out four awards - cinematography, makeup and hairstyling, film editing and live action - during commercial breaks to compress the broadcast.

Karey Burke, a top official with ABC, which is broadcasting the show, contends that the controversies have actually boosted interest in this year's Oscars next Sunday (February 25 AEDT).

The "lack of clarity" surrounding the event "has kept the Oscars really in the conversation and the mystery has been really compelling," Burke told Variety magazine earlier this month.

There are numerous noticeable firsts at this year's Oscars. In what many saw as a long overdue nod, Spike Lee received his first nominations for Best Picture and Best Director. His film BlacKkKlansman depicts an African-American police detective infiltrating the Klu Klux Klan, a notorious white supremacist group.

Black Panther, which became a cultural touchstone for its depiction of a superhero of African descent, is the first superhero movie to garner a Best Picture nomination, Hollywood's top prize. The massive blockbuster hit defies the Academy's history of typically shunning mainstream movies in favour of less commercially successful critical fare.

Black Panther and BlacKkKlansman come as the Academy seeks to diversify its voter pool after the social media campaign OscarsSoWhite exploded in 2016.

"This is an important moment in Oscar history," Academy boss Dawn Hudson said in a statement this month. "This year's show maintains Oscar traditions, and is also evolving to reflect our global audience."

Alfonso Cuaron's Roma has made waves for being a rare foreign-language film nominated for Best Picture and the first nod in the category for online streaming giant Netflix.

Vice, a dark comedy biopic on former US Vice President Dick Cheney, and Green Book, on the life of African-American jazz musician Don Shirley, are also nominated for the big prize.

The US-set films are joined by fellow nominees Bohemian Rhapsody on the life of singer Freddy Mercury, a tale of palace intrigue in the 1700s court of Queen Anne in The Favourite and the remake of the Hollywood classic A Star is Born, featuring pop superstar Lady Gaga.

Australian Associated Press