Scream VI was named best movie on Sunday night at the 2023 MTV Movie & TV Awards, which pivoted at the last minute from live to pretaped due to the writers strike,
The film also won best fight for Courteney Cox (as Gale Weathers) and the killer Ghostface, the latter of whom accepted both awards via pretaped video.
Accepting best movie, Ghostface quipped that there is finally an answer to the question, “What is your favorite scary movie?” — a reference to a classic line of dialogue from the franchise.
The Last of Us also was a big winner, taking three awards, including best show. Star Pedro Pascal was named best hero, while he and Bella Ramsey also were named best duo. Stranger Things won two awards.
The show was held amid the ongoing writers strike, which led host Drew Barrymore to drop out in a show of support for the striking scribes. (She will, however, host the 2024 edition of the Movie & TV Awards.) Though MTV originally planned to forge ahead with a live audience, the channel announced Friday plans to shift to a pretaped event.
The news came shortly after the Writers Guild of America said it had planned to picket outside of the Barker Hangar in Santa Monica, where the awards had been scheduled to take place as a live event. On Friday night, the WGA canceled its intentions to demonstrate.
Barrymore ended up appearing in the pretaped opening segment — which featured her inserted into recent films and TV series like The White Lotus and Cocaine Bear as her character from Never Been Kissed, Josie Geller, who finally gets her kiss from the aforementioned bear — as well as other pretaped bits. She also was named best host and accepted via pretaped video.
Also among the winners were Top Gun: Maverick star Tom Cruise, who won best performance in a movie and accepted from the cockpit of a fighter pilot jet, much in the same way he had appeared at King Charles III’s Coronation Concert at Windsor Castle on Sunday. Jenna Ortega won best performance in a show for Wednesday.
Jennifer Coolidge was honored with the Comedic Genius Award, accepting via a pretaped video and expressing her support for the writers who are “fighting for the rights of artists everywhere.” Pascal, the cast of RuPaul’s Drag Race and other winners also showed their support for the writers.