People's Choice Awards 2018: Nicki Minaj, Black Panther and Avengers: Infinity War triumph

The 44th People's Choice Awards kicked off at 9pm ET in Santa Monica on Sunday, with Nicki Minaj opening the evening. Rita Ora and John Legend also sang during the ceremony.

This year, 43 awards were to be attributed across the categories of movies, TV, music, and pop culture. Members of the public voted ahead of time for their favourite films, TV shows, musicians, and influencers.

Three special awards were given. Melissa McCarthy was named People Icon of 2018, Victoria Beckham earned the Fashion Icon title, and lawyer and social justice activist Bryan Stevenson was awarded the People's Champion gong.

In addition to providing the opening performance for the evening, Minaj collected two major awards during the ceremony. She was named Female Artist of 2018 and won the Album of 2018 award for Queen. Minaj thus had the chance to give two humorous acceptance speeches. In the first, she gave a shout-out to actor Michael B Jordan, saying he would be removing her dress later in the evening. Minaj's second acceptance speech saw her dedicate her award to "Kim Kardashian's a** in that dress".

Avengers: Infinity War, which was released in April this year by Marvel, was one of the night's big winners. The superhero film was named movie of the year and won the Action Movie of 2018 award. It also earned Scarlett Johansson the title of Female Movie Star of 2018 for her role as Black Widow.

Black Panther, another Marvel Studios production, led to two awards. Chadwick Boseman was picked as Male Movie Star of 2018 for his role as T'Challa, while Danai Gurira, who plays Okoye, won the Action Movie Star of 2018 gong.

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