The candy-colored love letter to musicals “La La Land” landed a record-tying 14 Academy Award nominations Tuesday, while a notably more diverse field of nominees brushed off two straight years of “OscarsSoWhite” backlash, with seven actors of color nominated out of the 20 actors.

“La La Land” matched “Titanic” and “All About Eve” for most nominations ever, earning nods for best picture, stars Emma Stone and Ryan Gosling, its jazz-infused songs and its 32-year-old writer-director, Damien Chazelle.

A trio of acclaimed films led the diversity overhaul, foremost among them Barry Jenkins' luminous coming-of-age portrait “Moonlight.” Its eight nominations, including best picture, tied for the second-most nods. Denzel Washington's fiery August Wilson adaptation “Fences” and Theodore Melfi's crowd-pleasing African-American mathematician drama, “Hidden Figures,” were also showered with nominations, including best picture.

Nine films out of a possible 10 were nominated for best picture. The others were: Denis Villeneuve's cerebral alien thriller “Arrival,” Kenneth Lonergan's New England family drama “Manchester by the Sea,” the West Texas heist thriller “Hell or High Water,” the “Lion,” and Mel Gibson's World War II drama “Hacksaw Ridge.”

The biggest surprise was the support for Gibson, who had been shunned in Hollywood since an anti-Semitic tirade while being arrested for drunk driving in 2006 and a 2011 conviction for domestic violence. Gibson also scored an unexpected best director nomination.

“Arrival” tied “Moonlight” for the second-most nominees, with eight nods. Yet its five-time nominated star, Amy Adams, was left out of the competitive best actress category.

Instead, Meryl Streep landed her 20th nomination. Her performance in “Florence Foster Jenkins” was among the best actress nominees that included Stone, Natalie Portman (“Jackie”), Ruth Negga (“Loving”) and Isabelle Huppert (“Elle”). Also left out was Annette Bening for “20th Century Women.”

Best actor favorites Washington, Gosling and Casey Affleck (“Manchester by the Sea”) were joined by Andrew Garfield (“Hacksaw Ridge”) and Viggo Mortensen (“Captain Fantastic”).

Along with Mahershala Ali (“Moonlight”) and Dev Patel (“Lion”), the best supporting actor nominees are Lucas Hedges (“Manchester by the Sea”), Michael Shannon (“Nocturnal Animals”) and Jeff Bridges (“Hell or High Water”).

Viola Davis, the supporting actress front-runner for her performance in “Fences,” notched the expected nomination. Also up are Naomie Harris (“Moonlight”), Octavia Spencer (“Hidden Figures”), Nicole Kidman (“Lion”) and Michelle Williams (“Manchester by the Sea”).

It's the first Oscars voted on since academy President Cheryl Boone Isaacs ushered in new membership rules and added 683 new members as a way to diversify a predominantly white, male and elderly group, which now numbers 6,687.

The inclusion influx Tuesday wasn't driven by any kind of response to the last two Oscars; most of the nominated films have been in development for years. And the awards still left many groups unrepresented. No female filmmakers were nominated for best director, and outside of Lin-Manuel Miranda (up for his song to “Moana”), Latinos were nearly absent.

Four black directors dominated the documentary category: Ava DuVernay (“The 13th”), Raoul Peck's (“I Am Not Your Negro”), Ezra Edelman (the seven-plus hours “O.J.: Made in America”) and Roger Ross Williams (“Life, Animated”). The other nominee was “Fire at Sea.”

The Academy Awards show will air Feb. 26.

AP writers Lindsey Bahr and Sandy Cohen contributed.