Wait, What’s Going On With the Golden Globes?
The golden globular Globes. Photo: Frazer Harrison/Getty Images
The Golden Globes as we know them are no more: On Monday, California’s attorney general approved a plan to dissolve the Hollywood Foreign Press Association and turn the Globes into a for-profit enterprise. This move, the most radical of a series of evolutions meant to restore the industry’s faith in the scandal-plagued awards ceremony, has been in the works for months. But if, like many people, you’re just hearing about it now, here’s a guide to what it all means.
The HFPA doesn’t exist anymore. Does that mean the Golden Globes are going away?
Nope. The 2024 Globes are still on the calendar for January 7, though how and where they will air is a different story. The Globes’ future is still uncertain after a multitude of racism and petty-corruption scandals, and the organizational transformation is a response to those scandals. As the Globes’ new owner, Todd Boehly, told the Los Angeles Times last year, his aim was to “transition the organization from a not-for-profit with no accountability and bad governance to an organization where there is employee-based accountability.”
Todd Boehly? That name sounds familiar.
If you’re a sports fan, you may know Boehly from taking over Chelsea Football Club after Russian oligarch Roman Abramovich was forced to sell the team. Boehly is something of a real-life Ted Lasso — by which I mean that many people now think he sucks: Under his ownership, Chelsea spent more than $400 million in the January transfer window and subsequently had their worst Premier League season ever.
Yeah, I don’t care about that. What else does he own?
Boehly’s holding company Eldridge Industries co-owns Dick Clark Productions, the company that produces the Golden Globes and which, alongside Eldridge, now owns the awards ceremony. Eldridge has minority stakes in A24 and production company MRC, which was behind projects like Ozark and Knives Out. The other owner of Dick Clark Productions is Penske Media Corporation, a conglomerate that operates Rolling Stone, Variety, Billboard, The Hollywood Reporter, IndieWire, and Deadline, among others. (As of a few months ago, Penske owns 20 percent of Vox Media, Vulture and New York Magazine’s parent company.) Eldridge owns stakes in Penske as well as in a real-estate business called Cain International, which owns part of the Beverly Hilton, where the Golden Globes are held.
Are there any conflict-of-interest concerns about the companies that own a Hollywood awards show owning bits of companies that make the movies and TV shows competing for those awards as well as every industry trade publication that covers them?
Listen, this is the Golden Globes: A little corruption comes with the territory. But to assuage such concerns, Boehly, who has served as interim CEO of the Globes since 2021, says he will appoint a new chief executive. Still, it’s worth noting that Penske properties got the exclusive announcement of this week’s news.
Back to the HFPA. If the organization now ceases to exist, what happens to its members? Will they be sent to a farm upstate, where there’s tons of space for them to eat canapés and ask actors inappropriate questions?
The actual members are staying in place if they want to. They will become salaried employees of the new for-profit organization with responsibilities that include voting for the Golden Globes and making content for its website. Pay is $75,000 per year, and they get insurance — medical and dental.
The salary is $75,000? Are they hiring?
The Globes responded to press inquiries by simply forwarding a copy of the press release announcing the sale, so we’ll never know.
What happens if they don’t want to stay?
Per the L.A. Times, any member who doesn’t want to be a Boehly employee will receive a $225,000 severance payment. Even when it no longer exists, being part of the HFPA continues to be a pretty cushy gig.
I remember that the Globes recently added a bunch of new nonmember voters in a bid to prove they were serious about changing. What happens to them?
They still get to vote, but there will be no paychecks for them. Sorry to younger, more diverse voters: You should have gotten in on the ground floor.
What is the subtext of all of this money talk?
To understand the stakes, you have to go back two years to the height of the backlash against the HFPA. The uproar was led by Hollywood publicists, who made a lot of noise about their principled objections to the organization’s lack of Black members and general willingness to be bribed. But by many accounts, that was just a smoke screen. The publicists’ real problem with the HFPA was its policy of exclusivity. If an actor wanted to campaign for a Golden Globe, they had to attend press conferences that only HFPA members were invited to, where every HFPA member was invited. These conferences constituted much of the journalism that this ostensible “press association” performed. Publicists hated this system, since it took power out of their hands and put it into the HFPA’s. By making members salaried employees, Boehly has said, they will no longer be financially reliant on exclusive access to stars, thus solving the publicists’ issue.
Does anything else change for the former members of the HFPA?
Since they’re now employees, they can now be fired, which — considering the many, many stories of HFPA members’ bad behavior — is no small thing.
One last thing: Where will the Globes air next year?
No one knows. The ceremony in 2022 was dropped by NBC as a response to the scandals but returned to the peacock this year on a one-year “prove it” deal. Puck’s Matthew Belloni reported that the Globes were unlikely to return to NBC, and that was before the 2023 ceremony drew roughly a third of its pre-pandemic audience. As one German member noted at the height of the backlash in an email obtained by the L.A. Times, the Globes’ future is dependent on finding an on-air home: “If that doesn’t happen, we are doomed, since we will soon run out of money and go bankrupt.”
Source: Vulture
