What the Golden Globes tell us about the 2020 Oscars

The Golden Globes are both the first checkpoint on the road to the Oscars and also a champagne fever dream. With that in mind, here are a few takeaways as we look to the award season ahead.

The curtain has fallen on the 2020 Golden Globes, Ricky Gervais bade us all good night and it’s time now to start thinking about the Oscars. The Academy will announce their nominees in just one week on Monday, Jan. 13, and the Globes, for better and frequently worse, are one of the industry’s favorite arbiters of what’s to come.

Notably, this list doesn’t address the fates of the Globes’ egregious nomination snubs. The results of the 2020 Golden Globes can’t really tell us anything about how the Academy will treat the movies and performances the Hollywood Foreign Press chose to ignore. One has to hope, pray even, the Academy will do their due to diligence and consider nominations for Little Women, Uncut Gems, Pain and Glory, Portrait of a Lady on Fire, Us, Midsommar, Hustlers, The Beach Bum, The Souvenir, The Last Black Man in San Francisco and/or The Lighthouse, among other great 2019 releases.

In any case: Here’s what the Globes can tell us about the Oscar odds of the movies they did choose to engage with.

Once Upon a Time in Hollywood is the film to beat.

Nominated for five Golden Globes, Once Upon a Time in Hollywood took home three trophies: Best Screenplay, Best Film – Musical or Comedy and Best Supporting Actor for Brad Pitt.

We’ve always known that awards bodies love stories about their own industry and a love letter to late ’50s Hollywood is obviously going to resonate with a voter base that shares that affection. Which is to say, OUATIH is an easy choice for prognosticators and success at the Golden Globes affirmed that Quentin Tarantino’s latest will be a top contender at the Academy Awards in early February.

Expect OUATIH to pick up a slew of Oscar noms — screenplay, director, best picture, best actor, best supporting actor, maybe even a best supporting actress — with strong odds in the picture, screenplay and director categories. After the Globes, it doesn’t even feel outrageous to suggest the Academy might send Pitt home a winner too.

Don’t sleep on 1917.

The shock upsets at the 2020 Golden Globes — the true Globes gonna Globes choices — were 1917 winning Best Film – Drama and Sam Mendes winning Best Director, for 1917.

1917, a World War I feature acclaimed for its simulation of a single-shot, had a limited release in late December and won’t be in theaters nationwide until Jan. 10, which makes it that weird Globes choice that most of the viewing public has not heard of, let alone seen.

But the Academy loves war movies almost as much as they love Hollywood movies and while this feels like an HFPA coronation the Academy will ignore when it comes to naming a winner, there’s no denying the awards — particularly in such major categories — bestow 1917 a certain significance. No one should be surprised if/when we see 1917 on the list of Best Picture and Best Director Oscar nominees.

Joker is all but out.

Joker had an undeniably disappointing showing at the Golden Globes. With two wins off four nominations, that may sound like a harsh judgment, yet considering the buzz that’s been building for three months, it’s fair.

Todd Philips probably never stood a chance at Best Director, but Best Film seemed very much in play, especially at an awards show that splits the film nominees into two categories. Still, Joker was in the conversation for both — a real awards juggernaut hope and/or threat, depending on your feelings regarding the feature.

Now, not so much. The January guild award shows and BAFTAs could help Joker‘s momentum, but it’s feeling more and more like the film will be represented on Oscar night as a Joaquin Phoenix vehicle — and one that may very well get him his first little gold man. The Academy does love a physical transformation that may or may have inflicted psychological damage on the performer.

The Irishman might be all out.

The Academy has historically been wildly disrespectful to Martin Scorsese and pair him with their nemesis Netflix and an 0-for-5 Golden Globes appearance and it doesn’t seem out of the realm of possibility that The Irishman will come up empty-handed at the Oscars.

Could The Irishman get zero nominations? That seems absurd — Scorsese should still get a Best Director nod, but it’s not hard to see Robert De Niro, Al Pacino and Joe Pesci falling out of the acting categories (especially if they’re splitting votes). A Best Picture nom also sounds much less realistic than it did just a few weeks ago.

(Somewhat related: Netflix’s Oscar momentum in general took a major hit at the Globes. After a veritable cornucopia of nominations for four Oscar-ready feature films, the streaming service went home with only one film trophy — Laura Dern for Marriage Story.)

Renee Zellweger is gunning for that Glenn Close in The Wife spot.

Renee Zellweger has been receiving Oscar buzz for her role as Judy Garland in Judy ever since the film premiered on the festival circuit last fall and we’d be remiss not to mention the performance checks many of the Academy’s favorite boxes (biopic, physical transformation, Hollywood).

Rightly, the performance categories give the Academy to recognize exceptional acting in otherwise meh movies. Whether this is Joker (where the quality of the surrounding film has been highly debated) or Judy (where it has not), it’s extremely easy to see an Oscar ceremony that honors Zellweger and keeps it moving, showering the higher profile films in nominations and hardware elsewhere.

The Parasite party has been delayed.

The Golden Globes should have, in theory, made Parasite fans feel good about the Korean film’s Oscar odds. It won its category, after all. But perhaps it was the timing — Best Foreign Language Film was announced very early in the night — or the disappointment of Bong Joon-ho not winning Best Director despite being feted all week, but it doesn’t feel like the Globes were the Parasite coming out party the night should have been.

It seems likely that Parasite will continue to get love at the guild awards and BAFTAS (more likely than it happening for Joker) and it would be legitimately shocking if Parasite doesn’t pick up even a Best Foreign Film nom, but it’s harder to see the Academy getting on the Best Film/Best Director bandwagon after the HFPA dropped the ball.

The Oscar nominations will be announced Monday, Jan. 13. The ceremony itself is Feb. 9, 2020.