Entertainment Trivia
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99 free Entertainment trivia questions with answers — entertainment quiz, new questions added Aug 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, William Wellman's 1927 aviation war film, took the inaugural Outstanding Picture award at the first ceremony in May 1929, and was the only fully silent film to win the category.
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 premiered in December 1937 as Walt Disney's first animated feature; its success set the pattern of re-releasing Disney features to theatres every few years.
Q 03Who hosted NBC's The Tonight Show from 1962 to 1992?
Johnny Carson
Johnny Carson hosted The Tonight Show for nearly 30 years, taking over from Jack Paar in October 1962 and signing off in May 1992.
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 was the first video MTV aired when it launched on 1 August 1981, a pointed choice for a music-video channel.
Q 05Which album is the best-selling album of all time?
Thriller
Thriller, Michael Jackson's 1982 album, is the best-selling album ever with estimated worldwide sales above 65 million; Jackson won a record eight Grammys in 1984 on the back of it.
Q 06Which show signed off in 1983 with the most-watched US series finale ever?
M*A*S*H
M*A*S*H's finale, Goodbye, Farewell and Amen, drew about 106 million viewers on 28 February 1983, a record for any US broadcast until Super Bowl XLIV in 2010.
Q 07Smells Like Teen Spirit was the lead single from which 1991 Nirvana album?
Nevermind
Nevermind was Nirvana's second album and major-label debut on DGC Records, with the song as its opening track.
Q 08Which 1995 release was the first feature-length computer-animated film?
Toy Story
Toy Story, released by Pixar and Disney in November 1995, was the first fully computer-animated feature; director John Lasseter received a Special Achievement Academy Award in 1996 for it.
Q 09Which series holds the record as the longest-running American scripted primetime television show?
The Simpsons
The Simpsons, on Fox since December 1989, has passed 35 seasons and 750 episodes, more than any other American scripted primetime series; Gunsmoke managed 20 seasons from 1955.
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, Bong Joon-ho's Korean thriller, won Best Picture at the 92nd Academy Awards in February 2020, also taking Best Director, Best Original Screenplay and Best International Feature Film.
Q 12EGOT stands for four awards: Emmy, Grammy, Oscar and which fourth?
Tony
The Tony Award, for Broadway theatre, completes the set covering television, music, film and stage; composer Richard Rodgers was the first to collect all four, in 1962.
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 co-created a show whose 180 episodes ran on NBC from 1989 to 1998, mostly around Jerry's Upper West Side apartment.
Q 22How many nominations did Hamilton collect at the 2016 Tony Awards, a record?
16
Hamilton received 16 nominations at the 2016 Tonys, beating the 15 held by The Producers and Billy Elliot; it won 11 and also took the 2016 Pulitzer Prize for Drama.
Q 23Which musical is the longest-running show in Broadway history and the first to reach 10,000 performances?
Phantom of the Opera
Phantom of the Opera hit 10,000 performances on 11 February 2012; Michael Crawford originated the title role and won both the Olivier and the Tony.
Bohemian Rhapsody, written by Freddie Mercury, was released in October 1975 as the lead single from A Night at the Opera, Queen's fourth studio album.
Q 14Who racked up five Best Director nominations without ever winning one?
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 15How many Academy Awards did Titanic (1997) win, tying the all-time record?
11
Titanic won 11 Academy Awards in March 1998, including Best Picture and Best Director, matching Ben-Hur's 1959 record; it was also the first film to gross a billion dollars worldwide.
Q 16Adjusted for inflation, which 1939 film remains the highest-grossing movie in history?
Gone with the Wind
Gone with the Wind, released in December 1939, tops inflation-adjusted box-office lists; producer David O. Selznick's search for Scarlett O'Hara saw some 1,400 women interviewed before Vivien Leigh was cast.
Q 17James Cameron's Avatar is set on which lush habitable moon?
Pandora
Pandora is a moon of the gas giant Polyphemus in the Alpha Centauri system; Cameron wrote an 80-page treatment in 1994 but waited more than a decade for effects technology to catch up.
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 on 9 February 1964 gave the Beatles their first live US television audience, a record 73 million viewers; they appeared again on the following two Sunday shows.
Q 19What was the working title of the sitcom that became Friends?
Insomnia Cafe
Insomnia Cafe was the title on David Crane and Marta Kauffman's original 1993 pitch; later working titles included Six of One and Friends Like Us before NBC settled on Friends.
Q 20Game of Thrones won how many Primetime Emmy Awards, the most for any drama series?
59
Game of Thrones won 59 Primetime Emmys across its 73 episodes, including Outstanding Drama Series in 2015, 2016, 2018 and 2019, the most ever for a drama series.
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 25Paramount bought the film rights to The Godfather novel for how much before it became a bestseller?
$80,000
$80,000 was Paramount's price for the film rights to Mario Puzo's unfinished manuscript, optioned in 1967 for $12,500; the novel went on to sell millions before the 1972 film.
Q 26Which actress holds the record for the most Academy Award nominations of any performer, with 21?
Meryl Streep
Meryl Streep won her first Oscar for Kramer vs. Kramer after persuading the filmmakers 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; the first came for only her third film, in 1933, and nobody else has more than three.
Q 29How many players compete in the deadly children's games of Netflix's Squid Game?
456
456 players enter the games, and the prize grows by 100 million won per death to 45.6 billion won; Hwang Dong-hyuk wrote the story in 2009 but found no backer until Netflix in 2019.
Q 30Breaking Bad is set and was filmed in which city?
Albuquerque, New Mexico
Albuquerque, New Mexico, is both the setting and the filming location; Vince Gilligan originally wrote the show for Riverside, California but moved it for New Mexico's film tax rebate.