Film Academy’s New Leader Starts by Sizing Up Oscars

LOS ANGELES â€" A day after she was elected president of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, Cheryl Boone Isaacs said her first order of business was to check in on the organization’s most valuable asset: the Oscars.

Cheryl Boone Isaacs was elected president of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences on Tuesday.

“I have a meeting with the producers later today, in fact,” Ms. Isaacs said.

Speaking briefly by telephone on Wednesday, Ms. Isaacs, who succeeded Hawk Koch, said she was generally happy with this year’s show, which attracted strong ratings but was also criticized for the crude humor of its host, Seth MacFarlane. And she said she had supported Mr. Koch’s decision to bring back last year’s producers, Neil Meron and Craig Zadan, though the choice of producers has customarily been left to the incoming president.

Still, Ms. Isaacs said she anticipated changes. “Right off the bat, it will not be the same show,” she said.

Ms. Isaacs, who was elected at a Tuesday night meeting of the group’s governing board, is the first woman to hold the post since Fay Kanin, from 1979 to 1983, and is the first African-American president in the group’s 86-year history.

A consummate academy insider, Ms. Isaacs has been part of the group’s board of governors for more than 20 years. She has worked recently as an independent marketing consultant, following an executive career at New Line Cinema and Paramount Pictures.

Ms. Isaacs and Robert G. Friedman, the co-chairman of Lionsgate’s Motion Picture Group, were regarded by fellow governors and other academy insiders to be leading prospects for the presidency.

One of Ms. Isaacs’s early tasks will be to oversee a renewal of deals with Dawn Hudson, the academy’s chief executive, and Ric Robertson, its chief operating officer, whose three-year contracts are set to expire next year. Ms. Isaacs also said she expected the academy to break ground next year on its planned movie museum in Los Angeles.

In filling other positions on Tuesday, the governors elected John Lasseter, the chief creative officer of Walt Disney and Pixar Animation Studio, as first vice president, while electing the writer-director Phil Robinson as secretary and Richard W. Cook, a film entrepreneur and former Disney executive, as treasurer.

Jeffrey Kurland, a costume designer, and Leonard Engelman, a makeup artist, were also elected as vice-presidents.

Also at their Tuesday meeting, the academy’s governors added a 17th branch, for casting directors, to the group’s existing divisions, which represent various groups of film professionals, including actors, directors, film editors and sound artists. A number of casting directors had previously been admitted to the approximately 6,000-member associations as members-at-large.

A version of this article appeared in print on August 1, 2013, on page B5 of the New York edition with the headline: Film Academy’s New Leader Starts by Sizing Up Oscars.