The Golden Globes are back, baby. This morning, the awards body formerly known as the Hollywood Foreign Press Association announced the nominees for the 81st annual Golden Globe Awards, set to air live in January. Aside from the expected snubs and surprises, the most notable thing about this year’s list of nominees is that there are so damn many of them.
The 2024 ceremony will be the Globes’ first following its acquisition by Dick Clark Productions and Penske Media Eldridge, which disbanded the controversial HFPA and turned the annual awards into a for-profit enterprise. The Golden Globe Awards has undergone a few significant changes, starting with the voting body, which is now comprised of 300 international journalists from 76 countries, all of whom are on the company payroll. For viewers, the most noticeable changes are the additions of two new awards—Best Cinematic and Box Office Achievement and Best Performance in Stand-Up Comedy on Television—and the expansion of nominees from five to six in each category.
At a glance, the resulting list of 2024 Golden Globes nominees seems unwieldy, a precarious move for an awards ceremony that honors both film and television. The list is also raising questions—some more pressing than others—about how films are categorized, who and what was snubbed, and whether the Globes should continue to exist at all. Let’s unpack.
Okay, who was snubbed?
When you start scrutinizing the Golden Globes nominees list, things immediately get weird. For one, not a single musical was nominated for Best Original Song or Best Motion Picture – Musical or Comedy despite two musicals hitting theaters this awards season—Wonka and The Color Purple. On the television front, The Morning Show and Abbott Elementary received noms in their respective genre categories (drama?, comedy), but none of the actors from the former were nominated and only Quinta Brunson was nominated for a performance in the latter. Also—The Morning Show? Really? I can’t tell if it’s more or less surprising than 1923 getting multiple noms, including for Best Television Series.
Speaking of nonsense, Reservations Dogs received zero nominations. The Sterlin Harjo series, which just concluded its run on FX, continues its streak of being largely ignored by major awards in its third and final season. Also snubbed in the TV categories was Swarm—though the Donald Glover and Janine Nabers series was divisive, Dominique Fishback gave one of the best TV performances of the year and deserved a nom.
On the film side, The Color Purple and Sofia Coppola’s Priscilla were shut out of every category, only earning acting noms for stars Fantasia Barrino, Danielle Brooks, and Cailee Spaeny. Two big biopics from veteran filmmakers—Ridley Scott’s Napoleon and Michael Mann’s Ferrari—were shut out entirely, along with Origin, the ambitious new drama from Ava Duvernay.
Which Golden Globes nominees are we happy about?
Once you overcome the initial information overload, there are several exciting nominees: Barbie, Oppenheimer, Killers of the Flower Moon, Poor Things, Succession, and The Bear earned the most nominations across the board. Barbie picked up nine noms, including Motion Picture – Musical or Comedy, Cinematic and Box Office Achievement, performance noms for Ryan Gosling and Margot Robbie, and two Original Song noms.
The nominees for Best Motion Picture – Drama and Best Motion Picture – Musical or Comedy are mostly great, too. In Drama, we’ve got Anatomy of a Fall, Killers of the Flower Moon, Oppenheimer, Past Lives, Maestro, and The Zone of Interest. And in Musical or Comedy, we’ve got May December, American Fiction, Poor Things, Barbie, The Holdovers, and Air.
Hayao Miyazaki picked up his first Golden Globes nomination for best animated feature with his latest (and possibly last) film, The Boy and the Heron, which is up against Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse and Suzume.
On the performance side, Lily Gladstone received a nod for Killers of the Flower Moon alongside Greta Lee for Past Lives, Annette Bening for Nyad, Sandra Hüller for Anatomy of a Fall, Carey Mulligan for Maestro, and Cailee Spaeny for Priscilla. In the supporting categories, it’s especially great to see Charles Melton up for May December alongside Mark Ruffalo and Willem Dafoe for Poor Things, and Da’Vine Joy Randolph landing a nod for her performance in The Holdovers.
This year’s director nominees include Greta Gerwig for Barbie, Celine Song for Past Lives, Yorgos Lanthimos for Poor Things, Christopher Nolan for Oppenheimer, and Martin Scorsese for Killers of the Flower Moon, all of which also picked up screenplay noms—along with Justine Triet and Arthur Harari for Anatomy of a Fall.
Which noms are the most unhinged?
Oh, boy, some of these nominees are unwell. Disney’s Wish and Pixar’s Elemental were both nominated for Best Motion Picture – Animated. It’s not as if there weren’t enough animated films this year. Netflix released two of the most acclaimed animated films—Leo and Nimona—and somehow two of the worst movies of the year were nominated.
The TV noms are the easiest to dunk on, especially the nods for The Morning Show and 1923. Although the Globes have a much more diverse voting body now, some of the nominees are bizarrely bland. Apple TV actually has some good series, none of which star Jennifer Aniston or Reese Witherspoon.
And the sooner we move on from libertarian auteur Taylor Sheridan, the better we’ll all be as a society.
What about the new Golden Globes categories?
The Academy Awards tried and hilariously failed to add a category for most popular film last year, but the Globes have found a smart way to honor populist titles with Best Cinematic and Box Office Achievement. Inaugural nominees include John Wick: Chapter 4, Barbie, Oppenheimer, Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse, and a little concert film called Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour.
The other new category is Best Performance in Stand-Up Comedy on Television, which seems like an okay idea given that there are few accolades for stand-up comedians outside of the Grammys. But as with the Grammys, the nominees are not exactly impressive. Wanda Sykes and Trevor Noah are standouts in a category that also includes Sarah Silverman, Amy Schumer, Chris Rock, and Ricky Gervais (are they doing him a favor?).
Is May December a comedy?
One of the biggest questions raised by this year’s list of Golden Globes nominees is whether May December, Todd Haynes’ film loosely based on the Mary Kay Letourneau case, belongs in the Best Motion Picture – Musical or Comedy category. The simple answer: It doesn’t. There are moments of camp and dark, uncomfortable humor in what is ultimately a thought-provoking and unsettling film. But Netflix submitted May December as a comedy, and it might not have received any nominations had it been submitted as a drama. The more interesting question to ask here is …
Should the Golden Globes ditch the genre categories altogether?
Yes. God, yes. Again, May December and Poor Things might not have stood a chance in the drama category, but splitting the films into this weird binary between “drama” and “musical or comedy” is absurd. Just make one category for Best Motion Picture and choose 10 films. What would we lose here? Air? Who cares. They didn’t even nominate a musical film in the “musical or comedy” category. At least rename that one “Best Motion Picture – Everything Else.”
Six nominees per category?
That’s fine. But maybe it’s time to spin the TV categories off into their own awards. Are we honoring the best nominees of the year or the most nominees of the year? As every major studio in 2023 can tell you, quantity is not more valuable than quality—though you won’t see them taking their own advice in any meaningful way.
When do the 2024 Golden Globes air?
If you choose to bear witness to the new and possibly improved ceremony, the 2024 Golden Globes will air live on CBS on January 7 at 5PM Pacific / 8PM Eastern. The show will also be streamed live on Paramount+.
Does any of this actually matter?
No, but it’s fine to pretend.
(featured image: Warner Bros. / Universal Pictures)
