Academy to Hold General Membership Meeting on May 4

Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences president Hawk Koch and CEO Dawn Hudson have sent an e-mail to the Academy’s 6,000 members inviting them to a general membership meeting to discuss “the future of the Academy.”

The meeting is scheduled to be held May 4 in Los Angeles, New York and San Francisco, although the save-the-date advisory, which went out Thursday, did not set out an agenda or explain the logistics of the event.

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It’s unusual for the Academy to hold a general membership meeting. Its members’ views are traditionally solicited through regular meetings of its board of governors, with each of the Academy’s 15 branches represented by three governors.

However, since being named CEO of the Academy in 2011, Hudson, who formerly headed Film Independent, has spoken frequently about engaging the wider membership in the Academy’s activities and has held a number of smaller meetings with various groups within the Academy to that end. The larger meeting is meant to be a continuation of those initiatives.

The May 4 meeting comes in the wake of last month’s Academy Awards, which saw increased ratings but also drew criticism for some of host Seth MacFarlane’s jokes. The meeting apparently was in the planning stages before the Feb. 24 Oscars.

The meeting was first reported by The New York Times.

An Academy spokesperson declined comment.