Entertainment Trivia
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147 free Entertainment trivia questions with answers — entertainment quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
50 free entertainment trivia questions with answers. This entertainment trivia quiz is 50 multiple-choice questions across film, television, music, theatre and games, from the first Best Picture winner in 1929 to Barbie, Squid Game and Baby Shark. Expect box-office records, Oscar and Emmy trivia, the stories behind Friends, Seinfeld, I Love Lucy and Breaking Bad, Broadway landmarks like Hamilton, Cats and The Phantom of the Opera, the Beatles on Ed Sullivan, Elvis, Adele, and a few detours into Pac-Man, Tetris and Jeopardy!. Every question has four options and one right answer, with a short explanation that adds a detail you probably did not know. About a third are easy enough for a family game night, a third are medium, and the rest will separate the film buffs and chart nerds from everyone else. Every answer has been checked against an encyclopaedic or primary source, and each question shows the page that confirms it.
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Q 01Which film won the very first Academy Award for Best Picture, at the 1929 ceremony?
Wings
Wings took Outstanding Picture at the first ceremony in May 1929; a second top prize, Unique and Artistic Picture, went to Sunrise that night and was dropped the following year.
Q 02Which 1937 release was the first cel-animated feature film produced in the United States?
Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs
Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs was nicknamed 'Disney's Folly' during its long, costly production; on release in December 1937 it was an immediate box-office sensation.
Q 03Who hosted NBC's The Tonight Show from 1962 to 1992?
Johnny Carson
Johnny Carson took over from Jack Paar in October 1962; when he retired in May 1992, NBC gave the desk to Jay Leno, which began Leno's long rivalry with David Letterman.
Q 04Which song opened MTV's broadcast on its first day in 1981?
Video Killed the Radio Star
Video Killed the Radio Star by the Buggles, a 1979 single, followed the words 'Ladies and gentlemen, rock and roll' when MTV went on air just after midnight on 1 August 1981.
Q 05Which album is the best-selling of all time worldwide?
Thriller
Thriller, Michael Jackson's 1982 album, has sold more than 65 million copies; its title track almost stayed off the singles list because his label saw a song about monsters as a novelty.
Q 06Which show signed off in 1983 with the most-watched US series finale ever?
M*A*S*H
M*A*S*H ran for 11 seasons, far longer than the three-year Korean War it depicted; its finale, Goodbye, Farewell and Amen, drew about 106 million viewers on 28 February 1983.
Q 07Smells Like Teen Spirit was the lead single from which 1991 Nirvana album?
Nevermind
Nevermind, Nirvana's second album, was expected by its label to sell about 250,000 copies; in January 1992 it knocked Michael Jackson's Dangerous off the top of the Billboard 200.
Q 08Which 1995 release was the first feature-length computer-animated film?
Toy Story
Toy Story nearly died in November 1993, when Disney halted production over a story reel in which Woody had become, in Tom Hanks's words, 'a real jerk'; Pixar rewrote the script.
Q 09Which series holds the record as the longest-running American scripted primetime television show?
The Simpsons
The Simpsons passed Gunsmoke's 635 episodes in April 2018; its family never ages, so Bart has stayed ten years old since the series began on Fox in December 1989.
Q 10Stranger Things takes place in the fictional town of Hawkins, in which state?
Indiana
Hawkins is a fictional town in Indiana; the 1980s-set series was shot mainly around Atlanta, with Jackson, Georgia standing in for the town's main street.
Q 11Which film was the first non-English-language winner of the Academy Award for Best Picture?
Parasite
Parasite won four Oscars in February 2020, including Best Director for Bong Joon-ho, although no South Korean film had ever been nominated for an Academy Award before it.
Q 12Which Broadway composer became the first person to win an Emmy, Grammy, Oscar and Tony?
Richard Rodgers
Richard Rodgers completed the set in 1962 with an Emmy for scoring a Winston Churchill documentary series; the word EGOT came only in 1984, coined by actor Philip Michael Thomas.
Q 13Bohemian Rhapsody was the lead single from which Queen album?
A Night at the Opera
Q 21Who co-created the NBC sitcom Seinfeld, 'a show about nothing', with Jerry Seinfeld?
Larry David
Larry David wrote himself into the show: George Costanza was based largely on him, and he also supplied the voice of Yankees owner George Steinbrenner.
Q 22Which musical earned a record 16 Tony nominations in 2016?
Hamilton
Hamilton's 16 nominations passed the 15 shared by The Producers and Billy Elliot, but its 11 wins fell one short of the 12 The Producers took in 2001.
Q 23Which musical is the longest-running show in Broadway history and the first to reach 10,000 performances?
Phantom of the Opera
A Night at the Opera, named after a Marx Brothers film, held a single that executives called too long at 5 minutes 55 seconds, until DJ Kenny Everett played it 14 times in two days.
Q 14Which director earned five Best Director Oscar nominations without ever winning the award?
Alfred Hitchcock
Alfred Hitchcock was nominated for Rebecca, Lifeboat, Spellbound, Rear Window and Psycho but never won; Rebecca took Best Picture in 1941, and he received only the Irving G. Thalberg Memorial Award in 1968.
Q 15Which film matched Ben-Hur's record of 11 Academy Awards at the 1998 ceremony?
Titanic
Titanic won 11 of its 14 nominations in March 1998, yet none for acting: Kate Winslet and Gloria Stuart, both nominated for playing Rose, went home empty-handed.
Q 16Adjusted for inflation, which 1939 film is the highest-grossing movie in history?
Gone with the Wind
Gone with the Wind tops inflation-adjusted box-office lists; producer David O. Selznick's long public search for Scarlett O'Hara ended with Vivien Leigh, an English actress little known in America.
Q 17James Cameron's Avatar is set on which lush habitable moon?
Pandora
Pandora is a moon in the Alpha Centauri system; Cameron wrote an 80-page treatment in 1994 but waited years for effects technology to catch up with what he had imagined.
Q 18The Beatles' first live US TV performance in 1964, seen by 73 million, was on which programme?
The Ed Sullivan Show
The Ed Sullivan Show had some 50,000 ticket requests for a 728-seat studio; manager Brian Epstein had accepted a minimal fee in return for top billing across three shows.
Q 19Which sitcom was pitched to NBC in 1993 under the title Insomnia Cafe?
Friends
Friends was pitched as Insomnia Cafe and scripted as Friends Like Us; ABC's sitcom These Friends of Mine was later renamed Ellen to avoid confusion with it.
Q 20Which series holds the drama record of 59 Primetime Emmy wins?
Game of Thrones
Game of Thrones won 59 Primetime Emmys over eight seasons, but Peter Dinklage, a four-time winner as Tyrion Lannister, was the only member of its cast ever to take one home.
Phantom of the Opera passed 10,000 Broadway performances in February 2012; when its closing was announced, attendance surged and the last night was pushed back to April 2023, after 13,981.
Q 24Andrew Lloyd Webber's Cats is based on a 1939 poetry collection by which writer?
T. S. Eliot
T. S. Eliot's Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats (1939) supplied the Jellicle cats and most of the lyrics; his widow Valerie gave Lloyd Webber permission and the unpublished Grizabella fragment.
Q 25Which author sold Paramount the screen rights to The Godfather before he had finished writing it?
Mario Puzo
Mario Puzo took a $12,500 option on his unfinished manuscript, rising to $80,000 if it was filmed, against his agent's advice; by producer Robert Evans's account, he had gambling debts to pay.
Q 26Which actress holds the record for the most Academy Award nominations of any performer?
Meryl Streep
Meryl Streep had 21 nominations as of 2025; she won her first Oscar for Kramer vs. Kramer after pushing to rewrite her character's courtroom testimony.
Q 27Who holds the record for the most Academy Awards won by an individual, with 22?
Walt Disney
Walt Disney won 22 competitive Academy Awards from 59 nominations, plus honorary awards including one in 1932 for creating Mickey Mouse, whom he voiced himself until 1947.
Q 28Which actress won a record four Academy Awards for Best Actress?
Katharine Hepburn
Katharine Hepburn won for Morning Glory, Guess Who's Coming to Dinner, The Lion in Winter and On Golden Pond, yet her only appearance at the ceremony came in 1974, as a presenter.
Q 29Which Netflix series follows 456 debt-ridden contestants through deadly versions of children's playground pastimes?
Squid Game
Squid Game's 456 players chase a prize of 45.6 billion won; Hwang Dong-hyuk wrote the story in 2009 and found no backer for about ten years, until Netflix took it on.
Q 30Breaking Bad is set and was filmed in which city?
Albuquerque, New Mexico
Albuquerque, New Mexico, is both setting and filming location; early scripts were set in Riverside, California, until the studio suggested New Mexico for its favourable financial terms.