For the first time, MTV has clubbed its Best Actor awards into a gender-neutral category. On Sunday, MTV announced the nominations for the first MTV Movie & TV Awards – earlier just the MTV Movie Awards – including for the Best Actor category that will now see male and female actors pitted against each other but divided into TV and movie categories instead.

The nominees for Best Actor in a movie include Beauty and the Beast’s Emma Watson, Logan’s Hugh Jackman, Split’s James McAvoy, Get Out’s Daniel Kaluuya and Hidden Figures’ Taraji P Henson. The nominees for Best Actor in a TV show include Game of Thrones’s Emilia Clarke, Stranger Things’s Millie Bobby Brown, The Walking Dead’s Jeffrey Dean Morgan and Atlanta’s Donald Glover, among others.

With these gender-neutral categories, MTV is going against the tradition of major award ceremonies, such as the Oscars and Emmys, still featuring separate categories for men and women. But the move is being viewed with scepticism.

Founder and Editor of Women and Hollywood, Melissa Silverstein, said clubbing male and female actors under one subhead could “severely [affect] female nominees in the future”. “We already know that women are severely underrepresented in many categories...If different awards events decide to remove gender identification from categories, it is incumbent upon them to work even harder to make sure a full spectrum of people are included in the nominees and selection committees,” she said, according to Dawn.

MTV has introduced five new awards this year with the aim to “highlight cultural relevancy in today’s society”, Billboard reported. These are Best American Story (for the TV show/movie that depitcts the United States at its best) and Best Fight Against the System (earlier called Best Fight and awarded to the TV show/film whose characters best depicted fighting against a suppresive system), in addition to Best Host, Best Reality Competition and Best Tearjerker.

The inaugural MTV Movie & TV Awards will be telecast live on May 7, hosted by actor and comedian Adam Devine.