Dwayne Johnson and Kevin Hart will host the 2016 MTV Movie Awards together, Variety has learned. The annual show, which airs on Sunday, April 10 at 8 p.m., will come prior to the duo’s summer film “Central Intelligence.”
This year’s MTV Movie Awards, which marks the 25th anniversary for the award show, will be pre-taped live-style across the Warner Bros. backlot the day before the broadcast on April 9, taking place outdoors across multiple locations, unlike most award shows, which air from a singular theater.
“We want to do a big, brave thing to celebrate movies,” the show’s exec producer Casey Patterson says of filming across the backlot. “We love Kevin and Dwayne for doing big, risky, bold things. Most award shows play it safe. They’re the right guys to take big swings.”
Patterson says Johnson and Hart make the perfect hosts because they engage with their fans. “We could not be in better hands than with these two guys because they really represent what it means to be a movie star right now,” the exec producer tells Variety. “They talk directly to their fans all the time. They are always in a conversation with their fans.”
“It’s an honor to be hosting the ‘MTV Movie Awards’ with a guy who’s not only one of the funniest guys on the planet, but who’s often mistaken as my twin, Kevin Hart,” said Johnson. “We live for our fans and promise to make this an epic, historic unforgettable night for them.”
Hart commented, “I love hosting — it’s my thing. Dwayne and I are the perfect team for the epic 25th anniversary show. It’s going to go down.”
“They understand exactly who MTV’s audience is, and growing up, this was their premiere movie award show,” Patterson says of the hosting duo, adding that the chemistry is “ridiculous” between the two of them. “The energy and the vibe of the show is very loose and anything can happen, and I think they can really be themselves. They organically have so much fun together. It won’t be about what we script. It will be those two just having fun and playing and celebrating movies. They love making movies for this audience, and they know what the fans love about their films so they’re going to be fantastic in that role.”
Marking the first award show to do so, filming across an entire backlot with multiple stages is in the vein of recent live television events, such as Fox’s “Grease Live!” which also taped on the Warner Bros. lot. The reason for the large production, per MTV, is to capture movie magic on the lot.
“We’re just excited to go out onto the streets on a movie lot so that we can celebrate films in a different way,” Patterson explains. “We’re going right where movies are made and we’re making this show right in the heart of that. We want to celebrate all the films of the year in a really theatrical way, and this space really allows us to do that.”
The scope of the show will be huge, Patterson adds: We are taking over. We are doing the show entirely outside so that we get as many fans packed in as possible in a festival way, which will be super exciting and never done before. Having two hosts is very helpful!”
As for being pre-taped, Patterson says its not because production spanning across many locations is too big to be live, but rather to get the right vibe. “We want to take advantage of all the drama of the backlot at night under the stars,” she says, explaining that the show will tape Saturday night and air on Sunday, giving a small window of time in between the televised show, which Patterson says will lend to the live-TV feel. (In order to get the look of the pitch black night on the outdoor set, if broadcast live, the show wouldn’t air until very late on the west coast after the sun sets.)
