On Monday, March 13, MTV announced a big change to its upcoming MTV Movie Awards. As of 2017 they are expanding to become the MTV Movie & TV Awards. These awards have been around since 1992, but now, after a quarter century of giving out its Golden Popcorn, MTV will celebrate television for the first time.
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MTV President Chris McCarthy said in a statement, “We’re living in a golden age of content, and great storytelling and characters resonate regardless of whether you’re watching it in a theater or on TV. The new ‘MTV Movie & TV Awards’ will celebrate even more of the brightest, bravest, funniest and most shared films and TV shows resonating across youth culture.”
This year’s nominations will be announced at a later date, but winners will be presented on May 7 during a live show at the Shrine Auditorium. On the day leading up to the show MTV will also be hosting its first ever Movie and Television Festival which will feature food, special guests and musical acts for a day-long party outside the Shrine.
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For years the MTV Movie Awards have been a youth-driven rebuttal to the Oscars, eschewing heavy Oscar films for populist fare like “The Matrix,” “Transformers,” “Twilight” (four times) and reigning champ “Star Wars: The Force Awakens.” But that’s not to say the tastes of the academy have never overlapped with the tastes of MTV fans. Their Best Movie winners have lined up three times: “Titanic,” “Gladiator” and “The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King.”
So what will be MTV’s answer to Emmy champs like “Game of Thrones,” “Veep” and “The People v. O.J. Simpson”? Given the widespread popularity of “Thrones” we could potentially see MTV’s tastes line up with the television academy right off the bat. But we’ll have to wait and see.
