I’m thinking of four of our most notable Oscar contenders this year, which were made by black directors. That group includes two men whose films recently won best picture: the “Moonlight” director Barry Jenkins, who returns this year with the romantic drama “If Beale Street Could Talk,” and Steve McQueen, who has followed up “12 Years a Slave” with the heist thriller “Widows.” They may be up against Ryan Coogler, the director of Marvel’s “Black Panther,” and the “BlacKkKlansman” auteur Spike Lee, who has improbably never received an Academy Award nomination for best director.

If any two of those movies crack either the best picture or best director category, it would be the first time in Oscar history that more than one black-directed film was so honored in the same year. Given that only five black people have ever been nominated for best director, and the first best picture nominee from a black director was the 2009 drama “Precious,” this is significant and overdue progress.

The streaming-service Netflix is also likely to make history this year in the pursuit of Oscar gold. The academy has limited the big N’s influence in previous seasons, mostly recognizing the company in feature-documentary and documentary-short categories. Last year, the period drama “Mudbound” was Netflix’s big play, and while it failed to penetrate the best-picture lineup, it did crash the cinematography race, where Rachel Morrison was the first woman to score a nomination in that category.

This year, the Netflix incursion is expected to affect nearly all of the big Oscar races. “Roma,” an acclaimed black-and-white mood piece from the “Gravity” director Alfonso Cuarón, will almost certainly make the lineup for picture and director, and Netflix has given the film a release in theaters first, a bid to convince cautious academy members that this disruptive company can still play by old rules. Netflix has already reshaped this industry in a way that will be felt for decades to come, and if the streaming service can win over the Oscars, then one of Hollywood’s last barriers will fall.

Finally, as we draw closer to the Oscar nominations in January, I’m reminded of the category that was hastily suggested and withdrawn almost as suddenly: the scuttled Oscar for best popular film. This award was meant to provide succor for big blockbusters traditionally overlooked by the academy and, in so doing, shore up dwindling Oscar ratings over the past two years. Personally, I think those ratings woes had something to do with disengaged Oscar host Jimmy Kimmel; if the academy is so determined to include the efforts of Ryan Reynolds or Dwayne Johnson on the Oscar telecast, maybe it ought to hire them as hosts instead.

The irony is that this year’s best picture winner has the potential to be the most widely seen in years. The front-runner, “A Star Is Born,” is nearing a domestic gross of $200 million and would be the most successful winner since “The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King” (2003), while the likely nominee “Black Panther” is the third-biggest film of all time at the American box office. (Even “Roma,” an art piece by any measure, can be watched in more than 100 million households thanks to Netflix.) We didn’t need a popular-film Oscar. We just needed better popular films.