Our reporter Sammie Purcell will be periodically covering awards season through the Academy Awards on March 2. You can follow her coverage on Rough Draft and in our entertainment newsletter Scene.
Awards season has been rumbling for a while now, but with the Golden Globes last Sunday night things are finally in full swing.
On the movie side of things, “The Brutalist” and “Emilia Pérez” were the big winners of the night – Brady Corbet’s period epic took home three awards: Best Motion Picture (Drama), Best Performance by a Male Actor in a Motion Picture (Drama) for Adrien Brody, and Best Director for Corbet; Jacques Audiard’s musical won Best Motion Picture (Musical or Comedy), Best Motion Picture (Non-English Language), Best Performance by a Female Actor in a Supporting Role in Any Motion Picture for Zoe Saldaña, and Best Original Song in a Motion Picture for “El Mal.” You can find a full list of winners and nominees here.
There’s only a short while until Oscar nominations (Jan. 17), but the Oscars themselves aren’t until March 2, and there are a lot of awards to be given out in the meantime. Until then, I’ll be keeping up with all the different precursors, popping in every once in a while to answer all your burning questions and help all you non-awards aficionados understand what all this means. For example: are the Golden Globes actually all that important in guessing what and who will win big on Oscar night?
The Globes are a funny animal. A few years ago, a Los Angeles Times piece revealed that the Hollywood Foreign Press Association (the then-voting body for the Golden Globes) had zero Black members. Allegations of corruption, including that HFPA members were accepting gifts from movie studios in exchange for votes, also came to light, causing NBC to decline to air the 2022 ceremony. The HFPA eventually disbanded, and a new voting body made up of entertainment journalists from around the world was born – although the group still hasn’t been able to avoid controversy altogether.
Even with all the recent drama, the Globes are still treated by most of the press as an important precursor/predictor for the Oscars (it should be noted that a lot of the publications that cover the Globes – such as The Hollywood Reporter, Variety, and Deadline – are owned by Penske Media, the same company that owns the Golden Globes). But just how often do the Golden Globes and the Oscars actually match up?
Apparently, it’s a coin toss. In 2021, Joe Reid published a piece in Vulture that found that of the 404 Golden Globes handed out in the film categories since 1991, just under half (201) went on to win the Oscar. The correlation was strongest in the acting categories; out of 30 Best Actress and Best Actor Oscar winners, 27 and 24 respectively also won the Golden Globe. However, the correlation was weakest for Best Picture. By my own calculations, since 2000, 12 of the Best Picture Oscar winners did not win in either the Drama or Musical/Comedy Best Picture categories at the Globes. Of the movies that won both the Oscar and the Golden Globe, the movies in the Globes’ drama category fared far better than the ones in musical/comedy.
There are obviously a lot of factors to take in here. The Globes hand out two awards for some of its categories, including the lead acting awards and Best Picture. The voting bodies for the Golden Globes and the Oscars are also dramatically different, so the Globes probably won’t hold as much weight as something like the Screen Actors Guild Awards, where there’s a lot more crossover between the voting bodies (see the 2025 SAG award nominations here).
In all likelihood, the Globes probably don’t matter too much in terms of how well they predict an Oscar winner. But one thing I think the Globes can do is start a narrative. For example, on Sunday Fernanda Torres won Best Performance by a Female Actor in A Motion Picture (Drama) for her work in “I’m Still Here.” Before this win, I would say Torres’ chances of even an Oscar nomination in quite a crowded Best Actress race were minimal. With such a short turn around to Oscar nominations, there’s probably still only a slim shot of her making the five. But if Torres’ win at the Globes causes enough Oscar voters to check out “I’m Still Here” before turning in their ballot, maybe she gets a little bit of an edge.
There is one person I think definitively turned out an A+ performance in terms of how to use a Golden Globes win to your advantage, and that is Demi Moore. Moore delivered a wonderful speech for her win for her role in “The Substance,” which marked the actress’ first Golden Globe of her career. Moore is a Hollywood legend, but she’s still managing to come off as an underdog in this race. She’s extraordinary in “The Substance,” and the metatextual elements of the story in conversation with her career only elevate the story around the movie and her awards run. Plus, she has never won an Oscar before. More than that, she has never even been nominated.
Awards season loves a narrative, and I think Moore’s win and speech helped boost the narrative she’s been building since “The Substance” released. However, awards season also loves to give us a narrative only to crush it at the very last second (see Lily Gladstone’s loss to Emma Stone last year). It just goes to show, you can prognosticate all you want, but we’ll never really know until it’s over. That won’t stop me though!
