The Oscars have launched a landmark campaign to diversify the ranks of Academy voters who decide which actors, movies and filmmakers earn recognition.
However, Hollywood's highest honours may remain a predominantly white affair for some time to come.
Amid outcry against a field of Oscar-nominated performers lacking a single person of colour for a second straight year, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences announced a sweeping affirmative action program on Friday, pledging to double female and minority membership by 2020.
The largely white, male and older makeup of the 6000-plus film industry professionals who belong to the academy has long been cited as a barrier to racial and gender equality.
"It's unprecedented for the academy to make this kind of drastic overhaul," said Tom O'Neil, editor of the awards-tracking website Gold Derby on Saturday.
"It's a very dramatic announcement and a very welcome breakthrough."
The changes, unanimously approved on Thursday night by the academy's governing board, include a program to "identify and recruit qualified new members who represent greater diversity" and to strip some older members of voting privileges.
Under the new rules, lifetime voting rights would be conferred only on those academy members who remain active in the film industry over the course of three 10-year terms or who have won or been nominated for an Oscar.
Actor Will Smith, film director Spike Lee and a handful of others vow to skip the February 28 awards show. They gave no indication that they plan to call off their Oscar boycott.
Warner Bros, one of Hollywood's major studios, issued a statement within hours embracing the Oscar announcement and Kevin Tsujihara, chairman of the Time Warner Inc-owned studio, added, "there is more we must and will do".
None of the measures will affect voting for this year's Oscars race - a contest whose dearth of racial diversity led to the revival of the trending Twitter hashtag #OscarsSoWhite that emerged in 2015.
April Reign, an African-American activist who started the tag after last year's nominations, said she welcomed the changes outlined by the academy but was still calling on viewers to boycott the Oscars this year.
"The academy can only nominate films that are made and so the onus has to be put on Hollywood studio heads to make more films that represent the beauty and diversity and the nuance of all of America," Reign said.
Longer-term change faces a deeply entrenched white, male-dominated system of studios, talent agencies and production companies that have been slow to welcome minorities in lead acting roles or as directors and screenwriters. Women have long faced similar impediments.
On Saturday, Oscar-winning director Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu at a panel of producers nominated for awards by the Producers Guild of America called the new academy rules "a great step" toward more diversity.
