If you’re looking for understatements about Hollywood, you can’t do much better than “the Academy Awards are changing.” From controversy over ethnic and gender diversity, to attempts to remove technical categories from the Oscars broadcast, to an experiment with a host-less show, nothing seems engraved in stone. The 90-year-old award show remains the gold standard of the film industry, but the sentiment that it doesn’t accurately reflect our world is not going away anytime soon.

A point of contention in recent years has been the fight to include an Oscar for Best Casting Director. Many have argued that a ceremony that celebrates acting should also recognize the artists who pair the actors with their roles. Casting directors remain the only crew members shown in the opening credits of films that do not have their own category at the Oscars.

The debate was partially fueled by the 2013 documentary “Casting By,...