The controversial comedian Ricky Gervais, the Golden Globes are d as Hollywood's biggest party, gathering from the film and television industries together to celebrate the greatest achievements made by each.
This year's awards were accompanied by relatively short acceptance speeches – the awards show itself only ran nine minutes past its scheduled runtime, with Joaquin Phoenix and Renee Zellweger being the only winners cued off the stage – and a relatively well-behaved Gervais, whose gimmick was to keep the clock moving, and the comments short and to the (very sharp) point. Most times, this specific program goes totally off the rails, being the only major televised awards show that serves alcohol, but even so, based on the winners, it can feel like the people behind the program are equally out of sorts.
There are several factors that go into establishing and declaring a pool of candidates and winners for these programs, and many of them differentiate from that of the Hollywood Foreign Press Association. However, despite their relative insignificance in predicting the Academy Awards, this NBC-broadcasted awards show is always a mega hit year in and year out.
The Golden Globes Aren't Great At Predicting the Oscars
Whether it's because of a coincidence or because many of the Hollywood Foreign Press Association are neither foreign nor of the press, the Golden Globes have not had a great track record when it comes to predicting the future winners at the Academy Awards. According to a 2013 analysis by Nate Silver (via FiveThirtyEight), the Golden Globes ranked sixth out of 16 total awards programs in of accuracy, with a 48-49% success rate at the time.
More recently, however, the trends have not gotten any better. In 2018, Birdman.
One of the blatant reasons for this differentiation is the fact that the Golden Globes has a strange structure; they notoriously hand out two separate prizes – broken into Drama and Comedy/Musical sections – for several categories. Included amongst those that get two presentations are Best Picture, Best Actor, and Best Actress, while Best ing Actor/Actress, Best Director, and Best Screenplay do not. The Academy Awards, on the other hand, offer only one award to all of those categories, with the exception of Best Screenplay, which is divided into Best Original and Best Adapted Screenplay.
The Golden Globes & The Oscars Have Different Voters
It is a common misconception that the people running one awards show run every other awards show, corralling these grand celebratory parties onto one giant host: Hollywood. This couldn't be further from the truth; while the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences are an all-encoming group of filmmakers, actors, and crew people, the Hollywood Foreign Press Association is a bit... quirky.
With a hip that never exceeds 100 participants (to put that into scale, The Academy has more than 8,000 voting member), the HFPA's ramifications and participation requirements are pretty loose. In order to qualify, a candidate must have written and published four articles in a foreign media outlet in the last year while maintaining a permanent, and primary residence in southern California. Though there is a $500 initiation fee, that seems like a relatively small price to pay given the prizes attached to it: the opportunity to be dashed away on all-expenses-paid trips by major movie studios for the Hollywood Oscar campaign (complete with celebrity photo ops and more).
Therefore, it goes without saying that the vast majority of the voting for the Golden Globes don't make a lick of difference to the Academy. Because they are not entertainers themselves, nor actual of the filmmaking community, their awards are less accurate in predicting the Oscars than other programs because its voters have no bearing and no belonging to various industry guilds, such as the Screen Actors Guild or the Producers Guild of America.
The Golden Globes Can Predict Some Categories
That being said, history shows that the HFPA is relatively accurate in some awards categories. A 2016 report from 1917.
But then again, there are some factors that go into the Academy Awards that may be affected by the Golden Globes. For instance, this year, Academy are required to submit their Oscar nomination ballots on Tuesday, January 7 – just two days after the Golden Globes. And given the fact that many Oscar voters may still have a stack of industry screeners sitting in their homes unwatched, a highly-publicized win for early-year and small name acting contenders like Awkafina in Rocketman might push an Academy member into nominating them.
