No golden Oscar for Austin Butler (‘Elvis’), but he could win Golden Popcorn at MTV Movie and TV Awards

 MTV isn’t where you’d think to go to avenge an Oscar slight, but it might end up that way at this year’s MTV Movie and TV Awards. Austin Butler (“Elvis”) is up for Best Performance in a Movie following his Best Actor Oscar nom for playing the king of rock and roll. He didn’t win the Oscar, but according to our early odds, he’s the front-runner to win MTV’s Golden Popcorn.

The Oscar race for Best Actor was closely contested to the very end. Butler was locked in a tight race with Brendan Fraser (“The Whale”). Butler won the Golden Globe. Then Fraser won the Critics Choice Award. Then Butler pulled off a stunning upset against Colin Farrell (“The Banshees of Inisherin”) at the BAFTA Awards. But Fraser finished strong by winning the SAG Award. Ultimately Fraser was the one who took the Oscar, while “Elvis” was surprisingly shut out, claiming none of its eight nominations.

But now fans will have their say at an awards show where a young heartthrob with a strong online fan base might stand a better chance. He currently leads our MTV Movie and TV Awards forecasts with 11/2 odds. Among those predicting him to win are 15 of our Top 24 Users and 19 of our All-Star Top 24. But after his Oscar loss you can’t take anything for granted. Ranked second with 13/2 odds is Michael B. Jordan (“Creed III”), whose film made about as much money as “Elvis” worldwide (over a quarter of a billion dollars) and came out more recently, keeping it fresh in fans’ minds.

And in third place with 7/1 odds is Tom Cruise (“Top Gun: Maverick”), a two-time MTV Movie Award winner for Best Male Performance for “Jerry Maguire” in 1997 and “Mission: Impossible II” in 2001 (back when MTV’s categories were gendered). That was a long time ago and fandoms have changed a lot since then. Many fans might not have been born the last time Cruise won a competitive Golden Popcorn. But “Top Gun: Maverick” was massively popular, making a bajillion dollars at the box office   $1.5 billion globally, to be more specific. At an awards show decided by the public, that could be a deciding factor.

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