“Black Panther,” the Hollywood blockbuster which garnered rave reviews, on Thursday led nominations for the MTV Movie and TV Awards.
The action movie about the fictional African kingdom of Wakanda and its king played by Chadwick Bosman received seven nominations including Best Movie for the June 18 awards, which will be decided by public voting.
The next nearest film was “Stranger Things” with six nominations, a Netflix series about supernatural occurrences in a small town in Indiana.
The MTV Movie and TV Awards, like the channel’s signature MTV Video Music Awards, celebrate pop culture moments and pride themselves on being less stuffy than the industry’s benchmark Oscars and Emmys.
Award categories include themes like “Most Frightened Performance” and “Best Kiss.” In another contrast with the industry-led awards, the MTV prizes for the second year will be gender neutral with no separate competitions for men and women.
“Black Panther,” is the third highest-grossing movie ever in North America since its release in January.
Comedian Tiffany Haddish will act as the host of the MTV Movie and TV Awards, which hands out statuettes shaped like popcorn boxes.
Haddish stars in the comedy “Girls Trip” which is also up for Best Picture, along with the action flicks “Avengers: Infinity War” and “Wonder Woman” and horror adaptation “It.”