Place these “Golden Popcorn” statues back in storage. The MTV Movie & TV Awards have been put “on hiatus” this year and will “return with a redesigned format in 2025,” according to a spokesperson.
The show, originally called the MTV Movie Awards, ran annually from 1992 to 2019, but has lost some momentum in recent years. The show did not take place in 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic. MTV was shown instead MTV Movie & TV Awards: The Best of All Timea clip show hosted by Vanessa Hudgens, which featured clips from past ceremonies.
The show ran in 2021 and 2022, but the 2023 show was blocked by the Writers Guild of America strike. Drew Barrymore was to host that year's show. Barrymore has found success in both film and television and would have been the perfect host but when the WGA went on strike on May 2, 2023 – just five days before the show began at the Barker Hangar in Santa Monica, California. – Barrymore and most of the scheduled guests dropped out. As a result, the traditional ceremony did not take place. It was replaced by a pre-recorded virtual ceremony without a host.
The MTV Movie & TV Awards was once a hot pop culture show. Hosts in the show's heyday included A-list stars such as Eddie Murphy, Will Smith, Ben Stiller, Mike Myers, Jimmy Fallon and Sarah Jessica Parker, the latter in her prime. Sex and the City fame. But the show has lost some of its charm in recent years.
The two post-pandemic shows that aired were co-hosted by Leslie Jones and Nikki Glaser, followed by Hudgens and Tayshia Adams. No shade to these performers, but they're no Eddie Murphy or Will Smith.
This isn't the first time MTV has pulled the plug on a show. The MTV Europe Music Awards 2023 were scheduled to take place on November 5, 2023 at Paris Nord Villepinte in Paris. The ceremony was canceled on October 19 due to the Israel-Hamas war, becoming the first EMA to be canceled in its 30-year history. Despite this failure, voting remained open until October 31. The winning artists were revealed on November 5th.
