Drew Barrymore will not host the MTV Movie & TV Awards, plans comeback for 2024

Drew Barrymore is stepping down as host of this year’s MTV Movie & TV Awards, in a show of support and solidarity for the members of the Amazing Writers Guild. But as a sign of goodwill to MTV, Barrymore also agreed to come back and host next year’s edition of kudocast instead.

The MTV Movie & TV Awards will continue Sunday night, but will now be hostless. The state of the show continues to evolve by the day, as producers turn to strike contingency plans and wait and see which presenters, nominees and guests are still willing to appear on broadcast television. As another nod to the cutting-edge news, there will be no red carpet or talent interviews before the show.

“I have listened to the writers, and to truly respect them, I am going to make the call to host the MTV Movie & TV Awards live on air in solidarity with the strike,” Barrymore said in a statement. “Everything we celebrate and honor in film and television is born of their innovation. Until a solution is found, I choose to wait but I will be watching from home and I hope you will join me. Thank you to MTV, who have truly been some of the best partners I have ever worked with. I can’t wait to be a part From this coming year where I can really celebrate everything MTV has created, a show that lets fans pick an award winner and is really inclusive.”

Barrymore won’t be at the live event, but she may still be appearing on Sunday’s show: As host, she’s already been involved in several short films pre-recorded for broadcast television — and those pieces are still expected to air in due course.

“Drew, without a doubt, was amazing. It’s hard to imagine we’d have had a better experience with a host,” said Bruce Gilmer, President of Music, Musical Talent, Programming & Events at Paramount Global and Executive Producer of the MTV Movie & TV Awards. “She’s more than a partner really, she’s there. It’s in it every day, just so passionate, so interactive, and so creative. She even bought some for her team during the trip. So when all of this reared its head, we started preparing for what could be. Not surprisingly, she stands in solidarity with the book, which we fully respect. She has our full support.

He added, “So you won’t be with us to live in the house for the show and we’ll go unhosted.” “The silver lining in all of this is that we have formed a partnership in an almost family-like atmosphere. So we see this as a shift in direction, but also a pause in the initial plan, which we all agreed upon and accepted to continue as our host in 2024.”

Gilmer said he is still waiting for word on any presenters and candidates who might attend because the situation is fluid. This includes The White Lotus star Jennifer Coolidge, who is set to receive a Comedic Genius Award. Gilmer said the producers are still wondering how the show will open — though, as of now, it could be a prequel featuring Barrymore. Next, the show plans to find a way to explain what’s going on with the strike and why the show looks a little different than it was originally planned.

But Gilmer said the show won’t focus on that, and instead still plans to “bring it to fans. Exclusive sneak peeks of the big movies that will be released. We still have live performances. We still have award sequences, although those are the items that don’t It’s predictable – because we obviously don’t know which talent will feel comfortable. A lot of them said.”

He added, “But we have a plan, since the awards show is voted on by the fans, we want to honor the fans’ participation and also honor the talents who won these awards.” “So we’re going to give awards. We’re working on a plan on how we can do that without the traditional presentation, in case talent or some talent doesn’t show up. We have backups for our backups. And we plan to keep many of the signature elements of the show the same. We’ll have It’s a live audience and it’ll still be a live event. It’s different, with more pre-recorded packages and whatnot, and it’s scalable, but it’ll still have that live event feel.”

Gilmer said the show will include some pre-recorded acceptance speeches for the winners, but the producers are also treading lightly in working with the talent while they decide whether to continue attending. The originally announced list of presenters included Tiffany Haddish, Jamie Lee Curtis, Dave Board (“Lil’ Dicky”), Gal Gadot, Rodrigo Santoro, and Sarah Michelle Gellar. Transformers: Rise of the Beasts stars Anthony Ramos and Dominic Fishback. “Yellowjackets” stars Courtney Eaton, Jasmine Savoy-Brown, Liv Hewson, Samantha Hanratty, Sophie Nelis and Sophie Thatcher; and “Joy Ride,” starring Ashley Park, Sabrina Wu, Sherri Kula, and Stephanie Hsu.

Also originally set to appear: Ayo Edebiri, Havana Rose Liu, Kaia Gerber, and Rachel Sennott (“Bottoms”); Camila Morrone, Riley Keough, Sam Claflin, and Suki Waterhouse (“Daisy Jones & The Six”); Halle Bailey and Jonah Hauer King (“The Little Mermaid”).

He said, “We’ll respect the talent’s decisions to either participate in the pre-tapes, or to appear or not, whatever they decide.” “We have back-up and cover plans just in case, so I guess the short answer is, I’m not sure yet… There’s also athletes and celebrity chefs and all sorts of other talents that haven’t been directly impacted. So we’ll go that route. We’ll look for some live talent.” In the room to help tell the story, but not hosting segments per se. We also have a very engaging voice artist with us, so stay tuned. It’s all unfolding in real time.”

The MTV Movie & TV Awards have faced many changes in recent years, due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The 2020 show, scheduled for that spring shortly after the outbreak, was moved to the fall of that year—then canceled all together, replaced by a pre-recorded clip show with some awards. The show returned in 2021 and 2022, but with restrictions imposed by COVID.

“We were definitely the first to use the VMAs in the early days of COVID,” Gilmer noted. “It was just as intense, but you also had the added complication of health. I wouldn’t sidestep the fact that we had a little bit of PTSD. But we have the best team, and Drew and her team are part of that. But yeah, we were battle-tested.”

Gilmer said he remains confident that this show will continue to be interesting for fans. “We’ve had a lot of acceptance from really big talent, and then the shorts are incredible. They’re so funny and entertaining and emotional and, you know, they’re right there. There’s more big, louder, more poignant voices than ever before, so they’ll be there. Audiences always love peeks at the biggest.” Movies that are about to be released. They just get to see those sneak peeks at this awards show. And we’ll be giving out the awards they voted for to the featured categories, like Best Kiss, Wicked Trip, all of that. Hopefully we’ve found a way to celebrate some of the year’s biggest, WTF moments “.