The Academy Awards are coming up next month but already more award-giving bodies are going to work with their own lists of winners from the best of multiple media from the year before to present their tokens to. While a majority of them are decided on by some panel or committee, the "People’s Choice Awards", a brainchild of Procter & Gamble and prolific TV producer and show developer Mark Burnett, prides itself on deciding the most enduring stalwarts of popular media for the year by the general public, hence its name. The 43rd PCA held Wednesday January 18 was quite an exciting one due to the prominence of superhero films from 2016.
Ultimately they proved their award-winning mettle, but there are plenty other names that made their mark, to the tune of Ellen and Britney.
Super streak
As stated earlier, some of the categories carried nominations mostly from last year’s crop of superhero flicks, and in fact the record for most number of PCA 2017 nominations went to Marvel Studio’s (technical) hero crossover “Captain America: Civil War” with seven nominations (two of them for one category). Shame that only Robert Downey Jr. got lucky for them with the ‘Favorite Action Movie Actor’ award, beating out Chris Evans even. Iron Man beating Cap as “revenge” for the events of the movie, get it? Coming in second for most total nominations (five) was the long-running TV series “Grey’s Anatomy”, with a tie between Disney’s animated modern fable “Zootopia” and the resurgent Britney Spears settling for four each.
Other super-related Favorites to triumph that day were “Deadpool” (‘Action Movie’ and ‘Movie Actor’ for Ryan Reynolds; more fodder for Oscar hype), Margot Robbie (‘Action Movie Actress’ in “Suicide Squad”), Jennifer Lawrence (‘Movie Actress’ in “X-Men Apocalypse”) and “Batman vs. Superman” winning ‘Favorite Sci-fi Movie’ (beating “Rogue One”!).
Ellen rocks, Britney resurgent
Super shenanigans aside, the PCA also proved very good for actress and TV host Ellen DeGeneres, who won Favorites in both film and TV categories. She was of course Dory (‘Favorite Animated Movie Voice’) in Disney’s “Finding Dory”, which also won ‘Favorite Movie’ and ‘Favorite Family Movie’. On the other fronts Ellen also walked away with Favorites in ‘Daytime TV Host’ and ‘Comedic Collaboration’ (shared with Britney Spears) from among the Digital categories.
Speaking of Spears, she’s proven herself to still be a true People’s choice for winning all her ‘Favorite’ nominations in ‘Female Artist’, ‘Pop Artist’, ‘Social Media Celebrity’, and of course the one shared with Ellen.
Round off wrap-up
With the big multi-winners out of the way, other media celebrities that won big in the PCA this year are ‘Favorite Movie Icon’ Johnny Depp (his sole 2016 role being “Alice Through the Looking-Glass”), “The Voice” as ‘Favorite Competition Show’, and Justin Timberlake’s “Can’t Stop the Feeling” as ‘Favorite Song’.
