Barbie, already the cinematic sensation – and highest-grossing film – of 2023, has dominated nominations at the 81st Golden Globe awards.
Greta Gerwig’s pastel-coloured satire is up for nine awards, including picture (comedy or musical), screenplay, director, leading actress for Margot Robbie, supporting actor for Ryan Gosling – as well as three separate entries in the original song category.
It marks Gerwig’s first nod in the directing shortlist, following snubs for Lady Bird and Little Women, and the haul makes Barbie the second most-nominated film ever at the Globes, tying with 1972’s Cabaret and second only to Nashville, which took 11.
Barbie also features among the nominees for a new award for blockbuster films, alongside Oppenheimer – the film whose unlikely alliance with Barbie dramatically boosted the summer box office – as well as sequels to John Wick, Guardians of the Galaxy, Spiderman and Mission: Impossible. Taylor Swift’s concert film and the Super Mario Bros animation also made the cut.
Christopher Nolan’s epic biopic of atomic scientist Robert Oppenheimer trails with eight nominations, including nods for leading actor Cillian Murphy, Emily Blunt as supporting actress and Robert Downey Jr for supporting actor.
Poor Things, Yorgos Lanthimos’s wild fantasy about a woman reincarnated with the brain of a baby, performed better than expected with seven nominations, neck-and-neck with Martin Scorsese’s Killers of the Flower Moon.
Emma Stone is up for leading actress in a comedy or musical for the former, while Lily Gladstone is nominated in the equivalent drama category. Gladstone faces competition from Annette Bening for swimming drama Nyad, Sandra Hüller for the Palme d’Or-winning Anatomy of a Fall, Greta Lee for romantic weepie Past Lives and Cailee Spaeny for Sofia Coppola’s Priscilla.
Stone, meanwhile, competes against a strikingly eclectic mix of performances, from Jennifer Lawrence’s raunchy role in No Hard Feelings, Natalie Portman’s barbed melodrama in May December and Fantasia Barrino from the new musical version of The Color Purple.
Paul Giamatti is clear frontrunner in the equivalent male category for his performance as a curmudgeonly teacher in Alexander Payne’s 1970-set comedy The Holdovers, ahead of Matt Damon (Air), Nicolas Cage (Dream Scenario), Timothée Chalamet (Wonka), Jeffrey Wright (American Fiction) and Joaquin Phoenix (Beau Is Afraid).
His co-star, Da’Vine Joy Randolph, is also heavily tipped in the supporting actress lineup, which includes Emily Blunt for Oppenheimer, Jodie Foster for Nyad, Julianne Moore for May December, Danielle Brooks for The Color Purple and Rosamund Pike for Saltburn.
Emerald Fennell’s divisive second feature also earned a leading actor in a drama nod for Barry Keoghan, alongside Bradley Cooper for his Leonard Bernstein biopic, Maestro. Three other nominees are also playing real-life figures: Murphy in Oppenheimer, Colman Domingo in civil rights drama Rustin and Leonardo DiCaprio for Killers of the Flower Moon.
Andrew Scott, who stars as a screenwriter who encounters his long-dead parents in All of Us Strangers, is also in line for the prize – but this was the only nomination earned by Andrew Haigh’s film, which dominated last week’s British Independent Film Awards.
As well as Oppenheimer, another film by a British director appears on the ascent in mainstream Hollywood circles as well as the festival circuit: Jonathan Glazer’s The Zone of Interest, which stars Hüller and Christian Friedel as Hedwig and Rudolf Höss, who created an idyllic home for themselves and their children just outside the gates of Auschwitz, where he was camp commandant.
The film is up for best drama, best foreign language film and best score, by Mica Levi. Its distributor, A24, picked up a total of 11 nominations, alongside Universal, who released Oppenheimer. Barbie’s haul helped Warner Bros to 12 nominations, while Netflix share 13 between their films and TV shows – a diminished lead from previous years (in 2023, they had 20).
British productions also feature prominently in the television nominations, with Succession up for nine awards, eight for its cast members and another for best drama.
Imelda Staunton, Dominic West and Elizabeth Debicki receive nominations for their work on The Crown, which is also up for best drama. Helen Mirren is celebrated for her work on 1923, while Rachel Weisz is nominated for audacious mini-series Dead Ringers. David Oyelowo’s work on Lawman: Bass Reeves also earns a nod.
The nominees were announced by Cedric the Entertainer and Wilmer Valderrama; the ceremony follows on 7 January, four days before Oscar voting begins.
Yet the impact of the Golden Globes on their more august awards sister is debatable: last year the Globes were dominated by The Fabelmans and The Banshees of Inisherin, both of which were entirely snubbed at the Academy Awards.
The ceremony is the first to be broadcast on US network CBS after the Globes’ longstanding relationship with NBC ended. It is also the first since a substantial backstage reorganisation this summer, which saw the disbanding of the Hollywood Foreign Press Association, which previously voted on and ran the Globes.
The HFPA was founded in 1944 as a way to try and leverage access to stars for foreign-language press. It has long been dogged by controversies that undermined its credibility. As well as sexual assault scandals, boycotts by publicists and allegations of numerous ethical lapses involving possible bribery, the HFPA came in for particular criticism when it was revealed in 2021 that none of its 91 voting members was Black.
The HFPA was broken up and the Globes assets – formerly a charity – became a for-profit outfit, after being sold to Dick Clark Productions. A new leadership team has been drafted in, after a restructuring that should ensure greater accountability.
The membership has been upped to 300 from 75 countries, with many of the new intake from minorities . Yet the body remains strikingly different from the makeup of Bafta and Oscar voters, which number 6,000 and 10,000 respectively, and are comprised of people working within the industry, rather than reporting on it.
