The Golden Globes don't "predict" the Oscars
Except when they do.
The 74th Golden Globe Awards were handed out at The Beverly Hilton on Sunday, January 8. On Tuesday, January 24 — just 16 days later — the nominations for the 89th Academy Awards will be announced, with the ceremony taking place on February 26.
The Golden Globes are known to be an oddball ceremony, partly due to the open bar, but at least one thing went as expected: The night’s big winner was La La Land, which broke Golden Globes records by taking home seven honors — Best Picture (Comedy or Musical), Best Actor (Comedy or Musical) for Ryan Gosling, Best Actress (Musical or Comedy) for Emma Stone, Best Screenplay and Best Director for Damien Chazelle, Best Score for Justin Hurwitz, and Best Original Song for “City of Stars.”
Other winners in the film categories were Best Picture (Drama) to Moonlight, Best Actress (Drama) to Isabelle Huppert for Elle, Best Supporting Actress to Viola Davis for Fences, Best Actor (Drama) to Casey Affleck for Manchester by the Sea, Best Supporting Actor to Aaron Taylor-Johnson for Nocturnal Animals, Best Foreign Feature to Elle, and Best Animated Feature to Zootopia.
La La Land is a frontrunner for the Oscars, so it’s tempting to take its Globes sweep as evidence that the Globes function as an “Oscar predictor.” That’s a natural assumption, because the Globes have so much in common with the Academy Awards: The show honors movies (in addition to television) with a glitzy, star-studded televised ceremony. Plus, it’s less than two months before the Oscars.
But is there anything to the idea that Globe results predict the eventual Oscar winners?
(Quick clarifying note: The awards that the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences hands out are called “Oscars” for reasons that are disputed. But “Oscars” and “Academy Awards” are generally used interchangeably to refer to the ceremony.)
No. The Globes aren’t set up to be an Oscar predictor.
Walt Hickey, writing at FiveThirtyEight, noted that in 2013, the Golden Globes had a success rate of only 48 percent in predicting the Best Picture winner at the Oscars. That’s not abysmal, but it’s not great, either.
One of the issues is structural: The Golden Globes give out two Best Picture awards — one for drama and one for musical or comedy — while there’s only one Best Picture Oscar. The awards for Best Actor and Best Actress are also split into the Drama and Comedy/Musical categories at the Globes, but the Supporting Actor and Actress categories — along with Best Director and Best Screenplay — are not. Similarly, while the Oscars split out screenplays by Best Original Screenplay and Best Adapted Screenplay, the Globes lump them all into one category.
This disparity means it’s virtually impossible for the Globes to “predict” wins in a meaningful fashion. The Globes nominations do tend to track near the Academy nominations (though there are always a couple of outliers). And beginning with the 2010 Oscars, up to 10 movies could be nominated for Best Picture, making it technically possible for all 10 Globe Best Picture nominations (in both drama and comedy/musical categories) to also appear in the Oscar Best Picture nominations list.
But it’s still fairly inaccurate. Last year, for instance, The Revenant won the Globe for the top drama prize, beating out eventual Best Picture winner Spotlight. In 2015, eventual Best Picture winner Birdman was beat out by The Grand Budapest Hotel for the Globes’ best comedy.
There are plenty of other categories at the Globes, of course; the Globes have been much better at predicting the Best Actor and Actress winners. Last January, Jason Bailey found at Flavorwire that over the past decade, the Globes had a nearly 90 percent accuracy rating for predicting the acting awards, versus director (40 percent) or picture (50 percent).
It’s probably safe to say that Aaron Taylor-Johnson’s surprise Best Supporting Actor win on January 8 for his performance in Nocturnal Animals is still a long shot for an Oscar nomination, especially given how many guild and critics’ awards Moonlight’s Mahershala Ali has been taking home for that spot, and how crowded the field is. But Casey Affleck and Ryan Gosling will certainly be battling it out for Best Actor at the Oscars, and Isabelle Huppert and Emma Stone are sure to appear in the tight Best Actress race.
And while La La Land and Moonlight will almost certainly be nominated for Best Picture — along with Manchester by the Sea — and their directors and screenplays will appear in their respective categories, who will win is still anyone’s guess.
So if you’re looking to win your Oscar pool this year, you’re best off also checking who won the top prizes at the various guilds: The Directors Guild of America (DGA) and Producers Guild of America (PGA) are typically the strongest predictors of the Best Picture win, the Screen Actors Guild (SAG) is usually the place to check for performance frontrunners (alongside the BAFTAs and the Globes), the Writers’ Guild (WGA) helps predict the screenwriting awards, and so on. FiveThirtyEight’s prediction model from last year has a great rundown.
No. The people who vote for the Globes don’t overlap with the Oscars.
The reason for the overlap with industry-specific awards is simple: A high percentage of the people who vote for the Academy Awards also belong to guilds like the DGA, PGA, SAG, and WGA. So people’s votes often overlap, disparate categories notwithstanding.
The people who vote for the Golden Globes, though, are an entirely different group, and they’re not industry voters. The Hollywood Foreign Press Association hands out the Golden Globes (check out our thorough explanation of the group here), and there is virtually no overlap between the HFPA and the Academy.
In brief: The membership of the HFPA never surpasses 100, and is ostensibly made up entirely of journalists based in Southern California who work for foreign publications — though even that status is hard to verify in a few cases. Currently, its membership hovers around 90. That small membership means it’s known for being unpredictable, and it’s sometimes accused of letting publicity and favors skew the results.
The Academy, on the other hand, is made up of close to 7,000 members, all of whom work or previously worked in the filmmaking business in some capacity or another — actors, directors, producers, screenwriters, and more. Academy voters still skew overwhelmingly white, male, and over 60, but new rules instituted last year (after the #OscarsSoWhite controversy) are changing that.
But then again, maybe.
The thing about awards buzz is that it’s generated by journalists and critics, and also by the way studios try to market their films to voters. A great deal of this happens through the distribution of screener discs for major films, which are sent to people who belong to major voting bodies (guilds and critics’ circles, plus Academy voters) to aid them in being able to watch everything and fill out their ballots.
This year, voting members of the Academy must submit their Oscar nomination ballots by Friday, January 13 — five days after the Golden Globes. And given how busy everyone is at the end of the year, it’s reasonable to bet that plenty of voters still have a stack of screeners sitting on the coffee table.
So while they’ve probably watched the favorites by now — La La Land and Moonlight and Manchester by the Sea — a Globes win for an underdog might push a voter to give the film a look before submitting their ballot. And thus, though it’s not all that likely that Aaron Taylor-Johnson’s surprise win will tip him into Oscar territory — you never know. And anyone who hasn’t seen Fences yet may be prompted by Davis’s win (and speech) to finally sit down and watch.
That means that while the Globes aren’t “predictors” for the Oscars, they can influence the Oscars. A surprise win at the Globes, if it pushes enough Academy members to watch or reconsider a film or performance they had forgotten about, could give a film the extra nudge it needs.
That’s hard to quantify, of course. La La Land’s win on Sunday probably won’t influence its (excellent) chances of taking home the top prize at the Oscars next month one way or another. But other films stand to benefit — and that’s why the Globes continue to be worth watching.