Awards shows are dying. Ratings for the annual Academy Awards telecast have dwindled from 46 million viewers in 2000 to 18.7 million in 2023. The Golden Globes were dropped by their network partner, NBC, after controversy over a lack of diversity on its nominating committee. And more people remember Will Smith slapping Chris Rock, instead of the movie that won Best Picture at the Academy Awards that year (it was CODA). Ceremonies need to do something to start attracting viewers – on that, we can agree. But the recent news that the Golden Globes was adding a new category for Cinematic and Box Office Achievement is so pandering, cheap, and obvious that I started to dwell on all the problems this new award will create. Then I remembered, it’s just the Globes. It doesn’t really matter.
Variety “broke” the news regarding the addition of the Cinematic and Box Office Achievement award at the Golden Globes. (I use quotes around “broke,” because Variety is owned by Penske Media, which also owns Dick Clark Productions, which purchased the Globes after the Hollywood Foreign Press Association folded.) Here’s how the trade described the qualifications for this new category:
Eligible nominees will be among the year’s highest-earning or most-seen feature films that also deliver creative excellence. Titles must have grossed at least $150 million during release, $100 million of which must have come from domestic box office. Streaming films with commensurate viewership will be considered based on data from ‘recognized industry sources,’ the Globes said. Eight films will be eligible for that prize, and can also compete for categories like Best Motion Picture Drama or Comedy, as long as they meet criteria for those fields.
Where do I even begin to laugh at this? Who, at the Globes, determines “creative excellence” in a blockbuster film? Why draw a distinction between creativity and financial success at all? Currently, 15 movies released in 2023 fit the criteria for the eight slots eligible for this category. Barbie and Oppenheimer are locked in. I can’t wait to find out whether the Globes view Creed 3 as being more creatively artistic than Transformers: Rise of the Beasts.
By introducing this category, are you creating a system (similar to the one currently plaguing the Academy Awards) that rewards a popular film – Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse, as an example – but then means the group doesn’t have to seriously consider the movie for Best Picture?
Then, you get to the line about streaming films, which will be considered for consideration if they can prove viewership numbers equal to that of a movie that earned $150 million. And the Globes will use “recognized industry sources” to determine those viewership numbers, and consider a streaming movie for this “illustrious” new award. Please, do tell us all what industry sources are going to provide the Globes with those numbers. Will they be shared with the public? If a popular movie such as Netflix’s Love at First Sight doesn’t make the cut, will the Globes explain that the film’s streaming numbers disqualified it?
There’s a delicious irony to this announcement coming days after esteemed filmmaker Martin Scorsese made headlines imploring audiences to look beyond box-office as a qualifier for quality. In his own terms, IP and franchise filmmaking was destroying cinema. What message does this new Golden Globes category issue in response?
This new category really started to bother me, until I remembered that the Golden Globes have very little impact in the ongoing awards race season, and only seem to be losing significance by the minute. The Globes already create category confusion each year by dividing its field of awards-worthy features into Drama, then Musical/Comedy. Dropping a third quantifier into the mix only dilutes the importance of the other two. There’s little doubt that Barbie won’t be in both this new Box Office category, and the Comedy/Musical category. Will some voters consider it for one, then overlook it for the other?
Instead, this new category appears to exist so that the studios behind the top money makers on the year can spend more For Your Consideration ad dollars in the trades – two of which, Variety and Deadline, are owned by Penske Media. And that bothers me, because a small part of me remains a purist, who grew up paying attention to the annual awards race thinking that quality mattered, and the Best Picture Oscar went to the best movie of that given year.
I’ve lost faith in the system as a whole, and in the Globes specifically. For years now, the Globes have felt like meaningless trophies given out during a televised party with winners determined by a handful of HFPA members who were wined and dined by studios and stars. The introduction of a vague category driven by money over art feels like another step towards the Globes being irrelevant in the grand scheme of the awards conversation.
