“One Battle After Another” has continued its awards-season surge: The Paul Thomas Anderson thriller earned nine Golden Globe nominations on Monday — the most of any film — followed by Joachim Trier’s family drama “Sentimental Value,” which earned eight, and Ryan Coogler’s genre flick “Sinners” with seven. The Globes separate their best picture races by genre, which widens the playing field from the Oscars’ maximum of 10 titles to a total of 12 nominees — and yet “Wicked: For Good,” an audience favorite, still didn’t make the cut.
Things aren’t looking too bleak for the Ozians, though. Actresses Cynthia Erivo and Ariana Grande were recognized in separate acting categories (which is odd, considering Grande is as much of a lead as Erivo in Part 2, if not more so). “Wicked: For Good” also landed two nominations for best song. If anything, the Globes most dashed the hopes of “Marty Supreme,” Josh Safdie’s much-hyped ping pong drama that landed in best picture, screenplay and lead actor for Timothée Chalamet — but not in best director, where either Safdie or his brother, “The Smashing Machine” director Benny Safdie, who won the Silver Lion directing award at the Venice Film Festival, were expected to compete.
The television side of things proved to be less surprising. Those nominations were dominated by Netflix and HBO (Max) — an expected but notable development after Netflix announced its plans to acquire some of Warner Bros. Discovery’s greatest assets. A new podcast category honored “Good Hang with Amy Poehler” and “Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard” alongside NPR’s news podcast “Up First,” representing a wide swath of interests but none of the controversy that might have followed a nomination for “The Joe Rogan Experience” or political podcasts such as “The Ben Shapiro Show,” which ran an expensive For Your Consideration campaign involving Times Square billboards and splashy magazine ads.
The 83rd Golden Globes, which will be hosted by returning comedian Nikki Glaser, will air Jan. 11 on CBS. Here are some of the biggest snubs and surprises from the nominations.
Actors races seem more muddled than ever
If you were looking to the Globes to settle your best actor/actress Oscars predictions, think again. In one of the most competitive years in recent memory, the split categories for drama and musical or comedy have just added more amazing names to the mix. Jessie Buckley, the presumed best actress front-runner for “Hamnet,” got in for drama, as did Renate Reinsve for “Sentimental Value,” who’s been on the board since the Cannes Film Festival in May. Rose Byrne, who’s won a string of major critics awards in recent days, will probably run away with the musical or comedy category for “If I Had Legs I’d Kick You,” but that leaves nine wild cards to fill the final two Oscars slots. Jennifer Lawrence for the comma-agnostic “Die My Love”? Tessa Thompson for the lush Ibsen adaptation “Hedda”? Julia Roberts for her prickly turn in Luca Guadagnino’s “After the Hunt”? A singing, dancing Amanda Seyfried in the 18th-century religious musical “The Testament of Ann Lee”? Erivo in “Wicked: For Good”? “One Battle After Another” newcomer Chase Infiniti? It’s chaos! (One name that seems likely to drop out for the big show is surprise nominee Kate Hudson in the crowd-pleasing “Song Sung Blue,” about a Neil Diamond tribute band.)
On the best actor side, presumed locks such as Leonardo DiCaprio (“One Battle After Another”), Chalamet (“Marty Supreme”) and Wagner Moura (“The Secret Agent”) all made the Globes cut — the first two competing in musical or comedy, the latter in drama — but so did surprises like a surging Ethan Hawke for “Blue Moon,” Joel Edgerton for “Train Dreams” and Lee Byung-hun for “No Other Choice.” Will Jeremy Allen White’s Bruce Springsteen make waves with the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences even after the movie’s scathing reviews, or George Clooney, despite the meh response to “Jay Kelly”? The only thing predictable is that the 2026 Oscar announcements on Jan. 22 will be breaking a lot of hearts. — Jada Yuan
Neon dominated across the board
At 21 total nominations, the indie film company Neon earned the most recognition of any motion picture distributor, besting heavyweights such as Warner Bros (which earned 16), Netflix (13) and Focus Features (10). Neon distributed five of six nominees in the non-English language category: Trier’s “Sentimental Value,” Jafar Panahi’s crime drama “It Was Just an Accident,” Park Chan-wook’s black comedy “No Other Choice,” Kleber Mendonça Filho’s political thriller “The Secret Agent” and Oliver Laxe’s EDM-fueled “Sirāt.” The final slot went to Kaouther Ben Hania’s “The Voice of Hind Rajab,” a dramatization of the Palestine Red Crescent Society’s attempts to rescue a 6-year-old girl from a car in Gaza City, where her family was killed by Israeli forces. “Hind Rajab,” which was executive produced by big-name Hollywood players such as Brad Pitt, Joaquin Phoenix, Alfonso Cuarón and Jonathan Glazer, struggled to find distribution before striking a deal with a small independent company called Willa. — Sonia Rao
Best director went niche and international
Nowhere was the international membership of the Globes more obvious than in the best director nominations. Predicted Oscar nominees Paul Thomas Anderson, Ryan Coogler and Chloé Zhao all made the cut, but, in a surprising move, three international directors did, too. Iranian dissident director Jafar Panahi is on the brink of making Oscars history; he would be the first person from his country to get a best picture or a best director nomination, and his Globes nomination supports that trajectory. Norway’s Joachim Trier’s “Sentimental Value” managed an incredibly strong showing with eight nominations, just one shy of “One Battle After Another” — including best director. And Mexico’s Guillermo del Toro’s best director nod showed the surprising strength of “Frankenstein,” which came away with five nominations. Both Trier and Panahi also got nominations in the screenplay category (the Globes doesn’t distinguish between adapted and original), which bodes well for their movies becoming eventual best picture nominees.
Out in the cold? “Marty Supreme” director Josh Safdie, who didn’t make it in, even though the Globes have six nominees to a category, instead of five at the Oscars. The directing branch at the Academy tends to lean international, so unless Safdie makes a gigantic push, he’s likely getting snubbed there, too, as is del Toro, who seems like the odd man out; Kathryn Bigelow, whose Netflix nuclear-crisis thriller “A House of Dynamite” completely blanked; and, sadly, Park Chan-wook for “No Other Choice.” If the South Korean master couldn’t break through at the Globes with a supremely topical comedy about desperation and unemployment, things aren’t looking good for him at Oscars time. — J.Y.
The Globes love Richard Linklater
In place of “Wicked: For Good,” there are not one but two Linklater comedies nominated for best picture: “Blue Moon,” which follows Broadway songwriter Lorenz Hart (Ethan Hawke) as he fades into professional obscurity, and “Nouvelle Vague,” about the making of Jean-Luc Godard’s “Breathless.” This is a surprising feat for the prolific filmmaker, whose two projects were well received but didn’t generate much awards buzz outside of Hawke’s performance in the former. Hawke was nominated for lead actor in a musical or comedy after staging a dramatic transformation as the balding, five-foot Hart. — S.R.
Amy Madigan’s efforts pay off
Grassroots campaigning for Amy Madigan has paid off: The “Weapons” standout earned one of six coveted slots for supporting actress, a category encompassing both genre categories. Madigan, who won a Globe in 1990 for the TV movie “Roe vs. Wade,” has expressed her surprise over the popularity of her performance as a witchy elderly woman in “Weapons,” Zach Cregger’s horror film about a classroom of third-graders who all mysteriously run away from home on the same night. She landed a nomination over “Sinners” actress Wunmi Mosaku, who was considered a front-runner for her role as a Hoodoo practitioner in the box-office-smashing vampire flick. Mosaku’s co-star Delroy Lindo, who also earned praise for his performance in the film, did not appear in the supporting actor category, either. — S.R.
Jacob Elordi carries ‘Frankenstein’ on his shoulders
How do you explain the undeniable strength of del Toro’s “Frankenstein,” which got five nominations while being dismissed by critics all season long? The answer might be in Jacob Elordi, who was a surprise double nominee for both playing that movie’s chiseled monster and as the lead of “The Narrow Road to the Deep North” — an Australian miniseries about a World War II vet that aired on Prime Video in April and that almost no one has talked about or heard of until this very moment. Could it be that, like the gentle, scarily strong monster he plays, Elordi (who stands 6-foot-6-inches tall) dragged “Frankenstein” to glory? He’s from a TV show, “Euphoria,” that was popular with the Globes in its first two seasons in 2020 and 2022. It seems like the voters enjoyed his growth enough to let del Toro (best director) and co-star Oscar Isaac (lead actor for drama) reap his spoils. “Frankenstein” also roared to life with nominations for best original score and best picture. — J.Y.
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