The stakes have rarely been higher for the Golden Globes. Not for the movies that are in contention for those shiny, clunky statuettes – the Globes has always been a pretty low-stakes contest, where you can relax because it doesn’t really matter who wins.
But for the organization that puts on the Globes, Sunday night’s ceremony will be enormously important. The past year has seen a wholesale reorganization that turned the awards and its governing body from a nonprofit enterprise to a for-profit one, in the process doing away with the Hollywood Foreign Press Association, the curious organization that had been handing out the awards since it began in 1944.
A newly enlarged body of voters, about 300 people from around the world instead of the 80-90 Los Angeles-based journalists for foreign outlets who used to cast ballots, must come up with a respectable slate of winners and persuade Hollywood to keep showing up. And the show must also attract viewers in its first year on CBS after more than 60 years on NBC, which dropped the show after the HFPA came under fire for ethical lapses and a lack of diversity.
As recently as 2020, the Globes got 18.3 million viewers, but things have been catastrophic since then: The 2021 ceremony, delayed because of COVID, dropped all the way down to 6.9 million. The 2022 show was a private affair with no guests, no broadcast and no rating. And last year, in what was supposed to be the first step back, the ceremony began with host Jerrod Carmichael savaging the HFPA and drew a paltry 6.3 million viewers.
So this year, they need to establish credibility, but also draw enough viewers to make financial sense for CBS or some other broadcaster that can maintain their high profile. The two most-nominated films are the two halves of the Barbenheimer phenomenon, “Barbie” with nine noms and “Oppenheimer” with eight, and that can’t hurt. Neither can the fact that the CBS lead-in to the Globes telecast will be one of three NFL football games, though the Bears v. Packers option is the only one with any playoff implications.
Still, 10 million viewers seems about the minimum for a true recovery, and that also seems pretty unlikely.
In a way, though, the ratings were out of the voters’ hands once they did their duty by nominating the hits. Coming up with a solid group of winners will be easier, with this year’s nominations giving them strong contenders to choose from in most categories.
And the makeup of this year’s voters is different, to the point where the usual questions that critics used to ask when trying to predict the winners (Who posed for the most selfies with HFPA members? Which studio was most generous with gifts?) are no longer germane.
About a quarter of this year’s Golden Globe voters are former members of the HFPA, which means the old voters are vastly outnumbered. More than a third of the voters are based in or write for outlets in Europe, a roughly equal number in Central and South America and Canada and a smaller portion spread across Africa, Asia and Australia.
That makes this an entirely different voting body, one that in certain ways is more representative of the Academy, which has grown increasingly international. (In other ways, of course, it’s still nothing like the Academy.)
If my suspicions about what movies will be nominated by Oscar voters is correct, this will be the first year since the Academy expanded its Best Picture category in 2009 that every one of the top Oscar nominees will have been previously nominated at the Globes – though that synchronicity would be more impressive if the Globes hadn’t expanded its categories to six nominees each, essentially providing 12 best-pic nominees for the Oscars to choose from.
(For the record, I’m guessing that the Oscar Best Picture category will consist of all six Globes nominees for dramatic motion picture – “Anatomy of a Fall,” “Killers of the Flower Moon,” “Maestro,” “Oppenheimer,” “Past Lives” and “The Zone of Interest” – plus the Globes comedy nominees “American Fiction,” “Barbie,” “The Holdovers” and “Poor Things.”)
Given the dramatic shift to voters based outside the United States, it’s realistic to think that the non-English films could show unexpected strength when winners are announced. The French film “Anatomy of a Fall,” which won the Palme d’Or in Cannes, could be a true contender to win the drama prize over more U.S.-focused dramas like “Oppenheimer” and “Killers of the Flower Moon,” and its lead actress, Sanda Hüller, could be a real threat to pull off an upset in the Best Actress in a Motion Picture – Drama category.
The television categories, meanwhile, are even more confusing than usual, since it’s hard to imagine that the 200-plus voters based outside the U.S. are aficionados of American TV. And while previous Globes voters always seemed to be looking for new shows to reward, can that possibly be the case in a year that saw the end of an awards juggernaut like “Succession?”
Here are my best guesses for what will happen on Sunday night at the Beverly Hilton. As for what will happen after that, when CBS and the entertainment industry gets to decide the future of the Golden Globes, that’s beyond the scope of these guesses.
Best Motion Picture – Drama: “Oppenheimer” over “Anatomy of a Fall”
Best Actor in a Motion Picture – Drama: Cillian Murphy in “Oppenheimer” over Bradley Cooper in “Maestro”
Best Actress in a Motion Picture – Drama: Sandra Hüller in “Anatomy of a Fall” over Lily Gladstone in “Killers of the Flower Moon”
Best Motion Picture – Musical or Comedy: “Barbie” over “Poor Things”
Best Actor in a Motion Picture – Musical or Comedy: Jeffrey Wright in “American Fiction” over Paul Giamatti in “The Holdovers”
Best Actress in a Motion Picture – Musical or Comedy: Emma Stone in “Poor Things” over Margot Robbie in “Barbie”
Best Supporting Actor in a Motion Picture: Ryan Gosling in “Barbie” over Robert Downey Jr. in “Oppenheimer”
Best Supporting Actress in a Motion Picture: Da’Vine Joy Randolph in “The Holdovers” over Emily Blunt in “Oppenheimer”
Best Motion Picture – Animated: “Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse” over “The Boy and the Heron”
Best Motion Picture – Non-English Language: “Anatomy of a Fall” over “Past Lives”
Cinematic and Box Office Achievement: “Barbie” over “Oppenheimer”
Best Director: Yorgos Lanthimos, “Poor Things” over Christopher Nolan, “Oppenheimer”
Best Screenplay: “Anatomy of a Fall” over “Barbie”
Best Original Score: Ludwig Goransson, “Oppenheimer” over Robbie Robertson, “Killers of the Flower Moon”
Best Original Song: “What Was I Made For?” from “Barbie” over “Road to Freedom” from “Rustin”
Best Television Series – Drama: “Succession” over “The Last of Us”
Best Actor in a Television Series – Drama: Gary Oldman in “Slow Horses” over Kieran Culkin in “Succession”
Best Actress in a Television Series – Drama: Sarah Snook in “Succession” over Bella Ramsey in “The Last of Us”
Best Television Series – Musical or Comedy: “The Bear” over “Abbott Elementary”
Best Actor in a Television Series – Musical or Comedy: Jeremy Allen White in “The Bear” over Bill Hader in “Barry”
Best Actress in a Television Series – Musical or Comedy: Ayo Edibiri in “The Bear” over Natasha Lyonne in “Poker Face”
Best Limited Series, Anthology Series or Motion Picture Made for Television: “The Bear” over “Lessons in Chemistry”
Best Actor in a Limited Series, Anthology Series or Motion Picture Made for Television: Steven Yeun in “Beef” over Matt Bomer in “Fellow Travelers”
Best Actress Limited Series, Anthology Series or Motion Picture Made for Television: Brie Larson in “Lessons in Chemistry” over Ali Wong in “Beef”
Best Supporting Actor in a Series, Limited Series, Anthology Series or Motion Picture Made for Television: James Marsden in “Jury Duty” over Matthew Macfadyen in “Succession”
Best Supporting Actress in a Series, Limited Series, Anthology Series or Motion Picture Made for Television: Hannah Waddingham in “Ted Lasso” over Meryl Streep in “Only Murders in the Building”
Best Performance in Stand-Up Comedy on Television: Chris Rock in “Chris Rock: Selective Outrage” over Ricky Gervais in “Ricky Gervais: Armageddon”