5th Annual AVN Awards Nomination Party Descends on Hollywood

HOLLYWOOD—The young tradition of the annual AVN Awards Nomination Party hit its five-year milestone Thursday night at the Avalon Hollywood nightclub. Adult industry perfomers, directors and power players came out in droves to be the first to learn who and what have been nominated for the 2019 AVN Awards, taking place Saturday, January 26 at The Joint inside Hard Rock Hotel & Casino in Las Vegas. Presented by MyFreeCams, the show will be co-hosted by Romi Rain and Bailey Rayne, with comedian Esther Ku—who was announced at Thursday night's party and helped call out some of the nominees, including those in ever-popular category Clever Title of the Year—serving as mistress of ceremonies. Also revealed at the event were the official 2019 AVN Awards Trophy Girls, hotly buzzed-about up-and-comers Athena Faris and Gianna Dior.  Though not announced among the top categories unveiled on stage Thursday night, one big evolution to the always-morphing AVN Awards category list this year was the addition of a whole new arena of competitive fields reflecting the exposion in the adult video realm of self-contained, elaborately produced featurettes. Specifically, AVN introduced the categories of Best Actor - Featurette, Best Actress - Featurette and Best Featurette. Modifications were made in other quarters as well: The AVN Awards committee revised Best Web Director to become Best Director - Web Channel/Site, in order to better recognize those whose principal station is to oversee most or all of the content released on one particular website or subsite. In addition, new category Mainstream Venture of the Year was created so as to honor adult talent for specific mainstream projects they undertook during the past year. See the complete list of 2019 AVN Awards nominees here.