Golden Globe nominations 2024: Barbie leads with 9, Oppenheimer close behind

Margot Robbie in a scene from Barbie, left, and Cillian Murphy in a scene from Oppenheimer. Photo / AP

Greta Gerwig’s Barbie dominated the Golden Globe Awards nominations with nine nods for the blockbuster film, including best picture musical or comedy as well as acting nominations for Margot Robbie and Ryan Gosling and three of its original songs.

It was closely followed by its release date and meme companion Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer, which scored eight nominations, including best picture drama and for actors Cillian Murphy, Robert Downey Jr. and Emily Blunt.

The revamped group, now a for-profit endeavour with a larger and more diverse voting body, announced nominations Monday for its January awards show, after scandal and several troubled years, including one without a broadcast. Cedric the Entertainer and Wilmer Valderrama presided over the announcements from the Beverly Hilton Hotel, where the show will also take place on January 7.

Ryan Gosling and Margot Robbie in Barbie.

Films nominated for best motion picture drama included Oppenheimer, Martin Scorsese’s Killers of the Flower Moon, Bradley Cooper’s Maestro, Celine Song’s Past Lives, Justine Triet’s Anatomy of a Fall and Jonathan Glazer’s The Zone of Interest.

In the best motion picture musical or comedy category, Barbie was joined by Air, American Fiction, The Holdovers, May December and Poor Things.

Yorgos Lanthimos’ Poor Things and Scorsese’s Killers of the Flower Moon both received seven nominations each. Poor Things saw nominations for Lanthimos, its actors Emma Stone, Mark Ruffalo, Willem Dafoe, and Tony McNamara for screenplay. Killers of the Flower Moon got nods for Scorsese, for direction and co-writing the screenplay with Eric Roth, and stars Leonardo DiCaprio, Lily Gladstone and Robert De Niro.

Stone, who was also nominated for the Showtime series The Curse, said in a statement that she was “Feeling extremely bewildered and thankful for it all.” She also said her Poor Things character Bella Baxter is her favorite and that she was “so grateful for the opportunity to be a part of this magical film experience”.

Barbie tied for second-most nominations in Globes history with Cabaret, from 1972. Robert Altman’s Nashville remains the record-holder with 11 nominations. It went into the morning as a favorite top, and got a big boost from its three original song nominations, including I’m Just Ken, and one of the year’s new categories, recognising cinematic and box office achievement. One person who was not nominated was America Ferrera, who delivered the movie’s most memorable monologue.

Cillian Murphy as J. Robert Oppenheimer. Photo / Universal Pictures

Succession was the top-nominated television programme, with nine nods including for series stars Brian Cox, Jeremy Strong, Sarah Snook and Kieran Culkin.

The box office achievement category nominated eight films, including Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour, The Super Mario Bros. Movie, Oppenheimer, Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse, Mission: Impossible -Dead Reckoning, John Wick: Chapter 4 and Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3. Several years ago the Oscars attempted to add a similar “popular film” category, but it proved to be an immensely unpopular decision and was scuttled amid backlash.

As always there were some big surprises, like Jennifer Lawrence getting nominated for her bawdy R-rated comedy No Hard Feelings for best performance by a female actor in a musical or comedy. She was nominated alongside Robbie, Stone and Fantasia Barrino (The Color Purple), Natalie Portman (May December) and Alma Pöysti (Fallen Leaves).

Lawrence, in a statement said she had so much fun making the movie that “it almost feels wrong to accept such an honor - but I will!!!... I cannot wait for some lukewarm Chardonnay. Let’s go!!!”

The Color Purple was expected to do better with the Golden Globes. The adaption of the stage musical got only two nominations total, both for actors, for Barrino and Danielle Brooks for her supporting performance.

The box office achievement category nominated eight films, including Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour. Photo / AP

Cord Jefferson’s comedy American Fiction also came up with only two nods, best musical or comedy and for lead actor Jeffrey Wright.

Sofia Coppola’s widely acclaimed Priscilla got only one nomination, for actor Cailee Spaeny’s portrayal of Priscilla Presley. Her category mates in best female performance in a drama include Gladstone, Annette Bening for Nyad, Sandra Hüller for Anatomy of a Fall, Greta Lee for Past Lives and Carey Mulligan for Maestro.

Best performance by a male actor in a drama included nominations for Murphy (Oppenheimer), Cooper (Maestro), DiCaprio (Killers of the Flower Moon), Colman Domingo for Rustin, Andrew Scott for All of Us Strangers and Barry Keoghan for Saltburn.

The Globes won’t have to worry about anyone criticizing its “all male” directors this year, however. Gerwig was nominated as was Celine Song, for her romantic debut Past Lives, alongside Nolan, Scorsese, Cooper and Lanthimos.

Netflix got the most nominations overall, with 13 total for a slate which included Maestro, May December and Rustin, followed by Warner Bros., which made Barbie, The Super Mario Bros. Movie and The Color Purple with 12.

Jacob Elordi as Elvis and Cailee Spaeny as Priscilla, in a scene from Priscilla. Photo / AP

Ridley Scott’s Napoleon was not nominated at all. Instead, its star Joaquin Phoenix was recognized for Beau is Afraid in the lead actor comedy/musical category, with Wright, Matt Damon (Air), Nicolas Cage Dream Scenario, Timothée Chalamet (Wonka) and Paul Giamatti (The Holdovers). Michael Mann’s Ferrari, with Adam Driver, and Wes Anderson’s starry Asteroid City also got zero nominations.

The voting body has now grown to 300 members, following backlash to a 2021 report in the Los Angeles Times that found that there were zero black members in the group that was then composed of only 87 foreign journalists. Perhaps as a result, there were more international films and actors nominated in prominent categories including the Finnish comedy Fallen Leaves, the courtroom thriller Anatomy of a Fall and the harrowing Auschwitz drama The Zone of Interest.

Helen Hoehne, the president of the Golden Globes, said on Monday that the group is “the most culturally diverse major award body”.

The 81st Golden Globe Awards will be the first major broadcast of awards season, with a new home on CBS, but no word on a host. And while to audiences it might look similar on the surface, it’s been tumultuous few years behind the scenes in the aftermath of the L.A. Times report, which also exposed ethical lapses like its members accepting lavish gifts and travel from awards publicists and studios.

The Golden Globe Awards had long been one of the highest-profile awards season broadcasts, second only to the Oscars. Before the pandemic, it was still pulling in around 19 million viewers. The show was touted as a boozy, A-list party, whose hosts often took a more irreverent tone than their academy counterparts. It also only honoured the flashiest filmmaking categories — picture, director, actors among them — meaning no long speeches from visual effects supervisors or directors of shorts no one has heard of.

Some years, the HFPA was pilloried for nominating poorly reviewed films with big name talent with hopes of getting them to the show, the most infamous being The Tourist, with Angelina Jolie and Johnny Depp. In the past decade, they’ve more often overlapped with the Oscars.

This year, NBC’s Tuesday night broadcast got its smallest audience ever for a traditional broadcast, with 6.3 million viewers.