Here’s everyone who’s going to win at the Oscars on Sunday night

“He’s really good at skewering show business and at skewering race relations in this country”, said Variety’s Tim Gray.

Fast forward to this Sunday night.

An Oscars producer says Rock threw out his original monologue and has completely re-written it to include the diversity controversy. On the other end of the spectrum, we’ve seen Lupita Nyong’o in pale blue Prada, for her 2014 Oscar debut (and victory), Michelle Williams in marigold Vera Wang, Angelina’s slit-to-there dress in 2012, and many moments of Jennifer Lawrence in Dior. The gender gap was also rather prominent in Academy voting – 77 percent were male. Chris Rock is about to enter the building. Aside from these two tweets, Rock hasn’t said a peep. “Chris finds a way of getting beneath popular opinion to something truer and more pointed”.

“I would not have been able to play this role had I not understood love of a tremendous magnitude and for that I thank my family”, she said. If you want to hear stories, talk to Nia Long.

The Oscars, which draws some of the biggest audiences of any single annual television event, typically have little effect on share prices of big publicly traded companies with movies in the running, analysts said. And Rock reportedly went back to the drawing board to craft a show script that reflected the #OscarsSoWhite protests.

Pryor delivered one of the most direct jabs at the start of the 49th Academy Awards.

Chris Rock has been given what some see as the ultimate honour in showbusiness – but this year hosting the Oscars is a double-edged sword.

Crystal hosted the 84th Academy Awards, marking his ninth time as ringleader, and took heat for a comment following Octavia Spencer’s best supporting actress win for The Help.

This year, non-white nominees will be absent for all of the major awards at the Oscars for the second year running.

In 2014, Rock wrote a blistering essay for the Hollywood Reporter on Hollywood race relations. They determined – surprise! – that “the film industry still functions as a straight, white boy’s club”. “OK, here’s a black guy.’ But is there a single black woman in “Interstellar”?” “The Purge”? ‘Neighbours”? I’m not sure there is”. “That’s right, you know Laundromat is coming soon, and after that Check Cashing Place”.

A new University of Southern California study on diversity at 2014 and 2015 gives failing grades to every Hollywood movie studio and most TV makers.

That study, Sharpton said, pointed to “a whole culture of exclusion” among senior Hollywood executives, leading to a dearth of greenlighted movies that speak to the experiences of black people.

Host Rock will be challenged to keep the show lively, because the telecast may be short on suspense.