MTV Movie & TV Awards

The awards ceremony has traditionally been tied to the start of the summer blockbuster season for the film industry, and since the launch of the television awards, the opening of that industry's awards season. The nominees are decided by producers and executives at MTV. The winners are then decided by the general public. Presently, voting is done only through an official MTV Movie & TV Awards voting website.^[2] Winners are presented with the "Golden Popcorn" statue made by New-York-firm Society Awards.^[3]

Production process[edit]

For much of its history, the ceremony was recorded for later broadcast, unlike the MTV Video Music Awards, which are usually live, but not live-to-tape, where the ceremony occurred in chronological order with appropriate edits. This meant that the ceremony was recorded out of order with the host segments recorded all at the start, followed by the musical performances and then award presentations, where those artists and actors nominated could choose to stay only for their award category and then depart after, with a seat filler filling their seat before or afterwards. After 2006, when Survivor producer Mark Burnett (who took over duties from Joel Gallen for the 2007 awards) took over production duties,^[4] it began to be broadcast live most years, though since 2017, it has been recorded live-to-tape, with a one or two-day delay before airing.


Since 2007, polls for several awards have been voted on through MTV's web and social media presences.


Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the 2020 awards were cancelled.^[5] Internally, the network had discussed a permanent move of the ceremony to December, which would place it in the early portion of awards season before the Golden Globe Awards.^[6] Instead, MTV aired a Vanessa Hudgens-hosted clip show, MTV Movie & TV Awards: Greatest of All Time, on December 6, 2020, which featured highlights from past ceremonies and highlighted notable moments from film and television since the 1980s.^[5]


The network stated that it aimed to hold a larger, weekend-long ceremony in 2021.^[5] On March 11, 2021, MTV announced that the 2021 MTV Movie & TV Awards would be held on May 16 and 17, 2021, with the first night focusing on films and scripted television, and a new, second night (MTV Movie & TV Awards: Unscripted) focusing exclusively on awards in reality television.^[7] The 2022 ceremony maintained the split format, but with both segments airing back-to-back on a single night.^[8][9] The 2023 ceremony was originally to be hosted by Drew Barrymore, but Barrymore and other planned guests dropped out in solidarity with the 2023 Writers Guild of America strike. As a result, the in-person ceremony was cancelled and replaced by a pre-recorded virtual ceremony with no host.^[10][11]