Awards season is in full swing with the Golden Globes nominations just announced, but before we dive into these nominations, there are two points of order to address. Point the first – why are we still doing this? The Golden Globes and their voting body, once called the Hollywood Foreign Press Association, are super shady and we had a chance to jettison this entire awards show off the calendar following the 2022 ceremony, which was not televised amidst the HFPA’s ongoing controversies. But the ceremony came back to TV in 2023, and now it’s just business as usual.

 

The best argument I heard for keeping the Globes is that there is a cottage industry in Los Angeles that depends on awards season made up of service suppliers and their workers, such as livery companies, security companies, caterers, event planners, etc, who make the big event and all its satellite events happen, and if you abolish the show, you essentially remove all that revenue from those people, who depend on these events for a significant portion of their fiscal year. That’s a legit concern! But I don’t think that’s why we still have the Golden Globes despite it being exposed as an incredibly unserious organization.

 

We still have the Globes because no matter what celebrities say, they cannot stand staying inside. Being famous is SO hard and it’s SUCH a burden and you just don’t KNOW what it’s like but try to get them to stay inside for five goddamn minutes and they start singing sh-tty Beatles covers for attention. Make no mistake, if the talent didn’t want to go, if they said, “This award has been diminished by all these allegations and we no longer want it,” the Golden Globes would be over. But the only celebrity to say anything like that is Tom Cruise. We’re going through this ridiculous charade with this ludicrously shady organization because celebrities can’t bear giving up one night of attention and you will not convince me otherwise. 

Which brings me to point the second: the goddamn attorney general of California is INVESTIGATING the Golden Globes. Well, technically, he’s reviewing the purchase of the HFPA/Globes by Eldridge Industries, the entity owned by billionaire Todd Boehly, who bought—tried to buy?—the HFPA/Globes in 2023. This reporting comes from Richard Rushfield’s The Ankler newsletter, he’s one of the very few actual journalists keeping an eye on the Globes/HFPA and all their shady sh-t. Which now includes an accusation of self-dealing and a non-competitive sales process last year.

 

As reported by Rushfield, back in September former members of the HFPA filed a letter with the AG’s office detailing their concerns about Boehly’s acquisition of the HFPA/Globes. The salient points are:

  • Contrary to previous reporting, the HFPA has not yet been dissolved
  • The acquisition process is still going through approvals by the (former?) members of the HFPA
  • Nothing has been paid yet for the deal
  • The most important allegation is that Todd Boehly used his position with the HFPA to self-deal and shut out competitive bids for the floundering organization

This is getting internecine but stay with me. Todd Boehly owned Dick Clark Productions, which was in partnership with the HFPA to produce the Golden Globes telecast. In 2023 Boehly stepped in as CEO of the HFPA to bail them out, but what he really did (allegedly) was pressure them to sell their organization, then a non-profit, to his own company, with an intention to turn the Golden Globes into a for-profit organization. While the AG’s office was reviewing the deal initially, Boehly and Jay Penske, whose Penske Media Corporation owns three of the four major industry trades, along with a number of other publications, joined forces to form Penske Media Eldridge, which bought Dick Clark Productions from Boehly in early 2023. Also, Boehly is an investor in Penske Media Corp. 

 

Basically, allegedly, two billionaires colluded in acquiring the HFPA and with it the Golden Globes, the telecast of which was once worth $60 million (current estimate: $3 million). They did this by ensuring the HFPA never heard rival offers, including one fronted by former Academy president Cheryl Boone Isaacs. And now the AG’s office might cancel the deal, which isn’t complete anyway. This whole thing is a f-cking farce. And now, onto the nominees for the Golden Globes, which appears to be an organization that only exists in our collective imagination.

Emilia Pérez leads the way with ten nominations, followed by The Brutalist with seven. Maybe the biggest surprise is The Substance, which banked five nominations, including noms for Demi Moore, Margaret Qualley, and two for Coralie Fargeat for writing and directing. Oscar nominations open the week after the Golden Globes, so while there is no overlap in voting bodies, the Globes are, as per usual, timed to provide some visibility just as Academy voters are preparing their ballots.

 

To that end, a few people get a much-needed boost: Pamela Anderson scored a nom for Best Actress; Sebastian Stan is nominated in the drama and comedy categories for The Apprentice and A Different Man, respectively; and because of the genre split, Glen Powell got a nod for best actor/comedy for Hit Man, which is probably the only look he’ll get this awards season (he should be a bigger factor, but the Oscars don’t take comedy seriously unless it’s a box office juggernaut like Barbie).

The dramatic actor category is probably the closest of all the acting categories to what the Oscar nominations might look like, with Adrien Brody, Timothee Chalamet, Colman Domingo, Ralph Fiennes, Daniel Craig, and Sebastian Stan on the ballot. Some combination of these six men are most likely to be the Oscar group, while the actress categories both include people who have been dark horses all awards season, such as Kate Winslet for Lee and Zendaya for Challengers

 

As for box office juggernaut Wicked, which leaped to the top of the Oscar leaderboard after its record-breaking opening weekend, it earned four nominations, which is not at all reflective of what I suspect will be a large Oscar haul. The Golden Globes don’t have craft categories, which is where films like Wicked, and A Complete Unknown for that matter, can pick up a stack of nominations. As I mentioned before, Timmy-Bob barely made it under the wire for awards consideration, and A Complete Unknown “only” pulled three Golden Globe noms, for Best Picture/Drama, Timothee Chalamet, and Edward Norton. Like Wicked, I expect it will be called more often on Oscar nomination morning.

On the TV side of the Globes, The Bear earned five nominations, while Shōgun got four. Only Murders in the Building also got four nominations, including one for Selena Gomez, making her a double nominee as she is also nominated for Emilia Pérez. Netflix hit Nobody Wants This got three nominations, which is only a surprise to people who didn’t know the show was a breakout hit. Speaking of breakout hits, Slow Horses and Mr. & Mrs. Smith also got three nominations each.

So what does it all mean? Mostly that we get to keep pretending like the Golden Globes matter. The week after the Globes, some of these people will become Oscar nominees, a lot won’t. More important than Golden Globes nominations are the winners, particularly if they give a good speech, because again, the Golden Globes occur three days before Oscar nominations open. Fence-sitters and low-info voters who haven’t actually watched a lot of movies this year can be swayed by a good speech, so a Globes winner could seal their Oscar fate with a good appearance at the show. Other than that, I don’t know what we’re still doing here, and I wonder if by this time next year the Golden Globes even exist anymore, if that AG probe ends up tanking their deal. 

See the full list of nominees here.