'Oppenheimer' dominates Golden Globes, 'Poor Things' upsets 'Barbie' in comedy

‘Oppenheimer’ dominates Golden Globes, ‘Poor Things’ upsets ‘Barbie’ in comedy

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“Oppenheimer” dominated the Golden Globe Awards, taking home the night’s top honor. Yorgos Lanthimos’ “Poor Things” won best comedy or musical at the event, an upset victory over the category favorite, “Barbie.” (Jan. 8)

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Taylor Swift, Timothée Chalamet, Margot Robbie, Selena Gomez and more of Hollywood’s biggest stars arrived at the Golden Globes in style. (Jan. 7)

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This image released by CBS shows producer Emma Thomas, foreground left, accepting the award for best motion picture drama for “Oppenheimer” as cast and crew members, background from left, Robert Downey Jr., Matt Damon, composer Ludwig Göransson, Florence Pugh, director Christopher Nolan, actor Cillian Murphy and presenter Oprah Winfrey look on during the 81st Annual Golden Globe Awards in Beverly Hills, Calif., on Sunday, Jan. 7, 2024. (Sonja Flemming/CBS via AP)

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CORRECTS GERWIG’S CREDIT TO DIRECTOR AND CO-WRITER - This image released by CBS shows director and co-writer Greta Gerwig, left, and actor Margot Robbie accepting the award for best cinematic and box office achievement for the film “Barbie” during the 81st Annual Golden Globe Awards in Beverly Hills, Calif., on Sunday, Jan. 7, 2024. (Sonja Flemming/CBS via AP)

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ADDS COMEDY OR MUSICAL TO THE CATEGORY - This image released by CBS shows Emma Stone accepting the award for best female actor in a motion picture comedy or musical for her role in “Poor Things” during the 81st Annual Golden Globe Awards in Beverly Hills, Calif., on Sunday, Jan. 7, 2024. (Sonja Flemming/CBS via AP)

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This image released by CBS shows Christopher Nolan accepting the award for best director for “Oppenheimer” during the 81st Annual Golden Globe Awards in Beverly Hills, Calif., on Sunday, Jan. 7, 2024. (Sonja Flemming/CBS via AP)

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This image released by CBS shows Cillian Murphy accepting the award for best actor in a motion picture for his role in “Oppenheimer” during the 81st Annual Golden Globe Awards in Beverly Hills, Calif., on Sunday, Jan. 7, 2024. (Sonja Flemming/CBS via AP)

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Paul Giamatti poses in the press room with the award for best performance by an actor in a motion picture, musical or comedy for “The Holdovers” at the 81st Golden Globe Awards on Sunday, Jan. 7, 2024, at the Beverly Hilton in Beverly Hills, Calif. (AP Photo/Chris Pizzello)

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Steve Yeun, from left, Lee Sung Jin, and Ali Wong pose in the press room with the award for best television limited series, anthology series or motion picture made for television for “Beef” at the 81st Golden Globe Awards on Sunday, Jan. 7, 2024, at the Beverly Hilton in Beverly Hills, Calif. (AP Photo/Chris Pizzello)

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This image released by CBS shows host Jo Koy during the 81st Annual Golden Globe Awards in Beverly Hills, Calif., on Sunday, Jan. 7, 2024. (Sonja Flemming/CBS via AP)

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Ayo Edebiri, left, winner of for best performance by an actress in a television series, musical or comedy for “The Bear”, and Jeremy Allen White, winner of the award for best performance by an actor in a television series, musical or comedy for “The Bear,” pose in the press room at the 81st Golden Globe Awards on Sunday, Jan. 7, 2024, at the Beverly Hilton in Beverly Hills, Calif. (AP Photo/Chris Pizzello)

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Justine Triet poses with the awards for best screenplay, motion picture for “Anatomy of a Fall” and for best motion picture, foreign language for “Anatomy of a Fall” in the press room at the 81st Golden Globe Awards on Sunday, Jan. 7, 2024, at the Beverly Hilton in Beverly Hills, Calif. (AP Photo/Chris Pizzello)

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Taylor Swift arrives at the 81st Golden Globe Awards on Sunday, Jan. 7, 2024, at the Beverly Hilton in Beverly Hills, Calif. (Photo by Jordan Strauss/Invision/AP)

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Ayo Edebiri poses in the press room with the award for best performance by an actress in a television series, musical or comedy for “The Bear” at the 81st Golden Globe Awards on Sunday, Jan. 7, 2024, at the Beverly Hilton in Beverly Hills, Calif. (AP Photo/Chris Pizzello)

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Hannah Waddingham, left, and Lenny Kravitz arrive at the 81st Golden Globe Awards on Sunday, Jan. 7, 2024, at the Beverly Hilton in Beverly Hills, Calif. (AP Photo/Chris Pizzello)

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Bradley Cooper arrives at the 81st Golden Globe Awards on Sunday, Jan. 7, 2024, at the Beverly Hilton in Beverly Hills, Calif. (Photo by Jordan Strauss/Invision/AP)

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Emily Blunt, left, and John Krasinski arrive at the 81st Golden Globe Awards on Sunday, Jan. 7, 2024, at the Beverly Hilton in Beverly Hills, Calif. (Photo by Jordan Strauss/Invision/AP)

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Da’Vine Joy Randolph arrives at the 81st Golden Globe Awards on Sunday, Jan. 7, 2024, at the Beverly Hilton in Beverly Hills, Calif. (Photo by Jordan Strauss/Invision/AP)

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This image released by CBS shows Billie Eilish O’Connell, left, and Finneas O’Connell accepting the award for best original song “What Was I Made For?” from the film “Barbie” during the 81st Annual Golden Globe Awards in Beverly Hills, Calif., on Sunday, Jan. 7, 2024. (Sonja Flemming/CBS via AP)

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Angela Bassett arrives at the 81st Golden Globe Awards on Sunday, Jan. 7, 2024, at the Beverly Hilton in Beverly Hills, Calif. (Photo by Jordan Strauss/Invision/AP)

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Hailee Steinfeld arrives at the 81st Golden Globe Awards on Sunday, Jan. 7, 2024, at the Beverly Hilton in Beverly Hills, Calif. (Photo by Jordan Strauss/Invision/AP)

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Jeffrey Wright arrives at the 81st Golden Globe Awards on Sunday, Jan. 7, 2024, at the Beverly Hilton in Beverly Hills, Calif. (Photo by Jordan Strauss/Invision/AP)

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Michelle Randolph arrives at the 81st Golden Globe Awards on Sunday, Jan. 7, 2024, at the Beverly Hilton in Beverly Hills, Calif. (Photo by Jordan Strauss/Invision/AP)

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Sandra Huller arrives at the 81st Golden Globe Awards on Sunday, Jan. 7, 2024, at the Beverly Hilton in Beverly Hills, Calif. (Photo by Jordan Strauss/Invision/AP)

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Host Jo Koy arrives at the 81st Golden Globe Awards on Sunday, Jan. 7, 2024, at the Beverly Hilton in Beverly Hills, Calif. (Photo by Jordan Strauss/Invision/AP)

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Quinta Brunson arrives at the 81st Golden Globe Awards on Sunday, Jan. 7, 2024, at the Beverly Hilton in Beverly Hills, Calif. (Photo by Jordan Strauss/Invision/AP)

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A general view of atmosphere at the 81st Golden Globe Awards on Sunday, Jan. 7, 2024, at the Beverly Hilton in Beverly Hills, Calif. (Photo by Jordan Strauss/Invision/AP)

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Representatives of Ernst & Young arrive at the 81st Golden Globe Awards on Sunday, Jan. 7, 2024, at the Beverly Hilton in Beverly Hills, Calif. (Photo by Jordan Strauss/Invision/AP)

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This combination photo shows Michelle Yeoh, from left, Will Ferrell, and Angela Bassett. Yeoh, Ferrell and Bassett, along with Amanda Seyfried, Julia Garner, George Lopez and Justin Hartley have been announced as presenters for this year’s Golden Globe Awards. The Golden Globes will air live on Jan 7, 2024. (AP Photo)

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Tom Kaulitz, left, and Heidi Klum arrive at the 81st Golden Globe Awards on Sunday, Jan. 7, 2024, at the Beverly Hilton in Beverly Hills, Calif. (Photo by Jordan Strauss/Invision/AP)

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Jo Koy speaks to reporters during the Golden Globe Awards Press Preview at the Beverly Hilton on Thursday, Jan. 4, 2024, in Beverly Hills, Calif. (AP Photo/Ashley Landis)

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Host Jo Koy arrives at the 81st Golden Globe Awards on Sunday, Jan. 7, 2024, at the Beverly Hilton in Beverly Hills, Calif. (AP Photo/Chris Pizzello)

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Helen Mirren arrives at the 81st Golden Globe Awards on Sunday, Jan. 7, 2024, at the Beverly Hilton in Beverly Hills, Calif. (Photo by Jordan Strauss/Invision/AP)

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Steven Yeun arrives at the 81st Golden Globe Awards on Sunday, Jan. 7, 2024, at the Beverly Hilton in Beverly Hills, Calif. (Photo by Jordan Strauss/Invision/AP)

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Clara Wong, left, and Paul Giamatti arrive at the 81st Golden Globe Awards on Sunday, Jan. 7, 2024, at the Beverly Hilton in Beverly Hills, Calif. (AP Photo/Chris Pizzello)

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Barry Keoghan arrives at the 81st Golden Globe Awards on Sunday, Jan. 7, 2024, at the Beverly Hilton in Beverly Hills, Calif. (AP Photo/Chris Pizzello)

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Kevin Costner arrives at the 81st Golden Globe Awards on Sunday, Jan. 7, 2024, at the Beverly Hilton in Beverly Hills, Calif. (Photo by Jordan Strauss/Invision/AP)

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Steven Spielberg arrives at the 81st Golden Globe Awards on Sunday, Jan. 7, 2024, at the Beverly Hilton in Beverly Hills, Calif. (Photo by Jordan Strauss/Invision/AP)

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Colman Domingo, left, and Martin Short arrive at the 81st Golden Globe Awards on Sunday, Jan. 7, 2024, at the Beverly Hilton in Beverly Hills, Calif. (AP Photo/Chris Pizzello)

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Meryl Streep arrives at the 81st Golden Globe Awards on Sunday, Jan. 7, 2024, at the Beverly Hilton in Beverly Hills, Calif. (Photo by Jordan Strauss/Invision/AP)

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CORRECTS SPELLING FROM JULIANNA TO JULIANNE - Bart Freundlich, left, and Julianne Moore arrive at the 81st Golden Globe Awards on Sunday, Jan. 7, 2024, at the Beverly Hilton in Beverly Hills, Calif. (AP Photo/Chris Pizzello)

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Natasha Lyonne arrives at the 81st Golden Globe Awards on Sunday, Jan. 7, 2024, at the Beverly Hilton in Beverly Hills, Calif. (Photo by Jordan Strauss/Invision/AP)

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This image released by CBS shows Lionel Boyce, center, with the cast of “The Bear” as they accept the award for best television series - musical or comedy during the 81st Annual Golden Globe Awards in Beverly Hills, Calif., on Sunday, Jan. 7, 2024. (Sonja Flemming/CBS via AP)

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Florence Pugh arrives at the 81st Golden Globe Awards on Sunday, Jan. 7, 2024, at the Beverly Hilton in Beverly Hills, Calif. (Photo by Jordan Strauss/Invision/AP)

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Gerta Gerwig, left, and Noah Baumbach arrive at the 81st Golden Globe Awards on Sunday, Jan. 7, 2024, at the Beverly Hilton in Beverly Hills, Calif. (Photo by Jordan Strauss/Invision/AP)

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Jennifer Aniston arrives at the 81st Golden Globe Awards on Sunday, Jan. 7, 2024, at the Beverly Hilton in Beverly Hills, Calif. (Photo by Jordan Strauss/Invision/AP)

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This image released by CBS shows filmmaker Yorgos Lanthimos, foreground, with the cast as he accepts the award for best motion picture - musical or comedy for “Poor Things” during the 81st Annual Golden Globe Awards in Beverly Hills, Calif., on Sunday, Jan. 7, 2024. (Sonja Flemming/CBS via AP)

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This image released by CBS shows co-director Greta Gerwig, left, and actor Margot Robbie accepting the award for best cinematic and box office achievement for the film “Barbie” during the 81st Annual Golden Globe Awards in Beverly Hills, Calif., on Sunday, Jan. 7, 2024. (Sonja Flemming/CBS via AP)

By JAKE COYLE

Christopher Nolan’s blockbuster biopic “Oppenheimer” dominated the 81st Golden Globes, winning five awards including best drama, while Yorgos Lanthimos’ Frankenstein riff “Poor Things” pulled off an upset victory over “Barbie” to triumph in the best comedy or musical category.

If awards season has been building toward a second match-up of Barbenheimer, this round went to “Oppenheimer.” The film also won best director for Nolan, best drama actor for Cillian Murphy, best supporting actor for Robert Downey Jr. and for Ludwig Göransson’s score.

“I don’t think it was a no-brainer by any stretch of the imagination to make a three-hour talky movie — R-rated by the way — about one of the darkest developments in our history,” said producer Emma Thomas accepting the night’s final award and thanking Universal chief Donna Langley.

Along with best comedy or musical, “Poor Things” also won for Emma Stone’s performance as Bella, a Victorian-era woman experiencing a surreal sexual awakening.

“I see this as a rom-com,” said Stone. “But in the sense that Bella falls in love with life itself, rather than a person. She accepts the good and the bad in equal measure, and that really made me look at life differently.”

Not PARSE.LY: Golden Globe Awards

Golden Globes tap Nikki Glaser to be the telecast’s next host

Lily Gladstone won best actress in a dramatic film for Martin Scorsese’s “Killers of the Flower Moon.” Gladstone, who began her speech speaking the language of her native tribe, Blackfeet Nation, is the first Indigenous winner in the category.

“This is a historic win,” said Gladstone. “It doesn’t just belong to me.”

The Globes were in their ninth decade but facing a new and uncertain chapter. After a tumultuous few years of scandal, the Hollywood Foreign Press Association was dissolved, leaving a new Globes, on a new network (CBS), to try to regain its perch as the third biggest award show of the year, after the Oscars and Grammys. Even the menu (sushi from Nobu) was remade.

“Golden Globes journalists, thank you for changing your game, therefore changing your name,” said Downey in his acceptance speech.

It got off to a rocky start. Host Jo Koy took the stage at the Beverly Hilton International Ballroom in Beverly Hills, California . The Filipino American stand-up hit on some expected topics: Ozempic, Meryl Streep’s knack for winning awards and the long-running “Oppenheimer.” (“I needed another hour.”)

After one joke flubbed, Koy, who was named host after some bigger names reportedly passed, also noted how fast he was thrust into the job.

“Yo, I got the gig 10 days ago. You want a perfect monologue?” said Koy. “I wrote some of these and they’re the ones you’re laughing at.”

HI, BARBIE

Downey’s win, his third Globe, denied one to “Kenergy.” Ryan Gosling had been seen as his stiffest competition, just one of the many head-to-head contests between “Oppenheimer” and Greta Gerwig’s “Barbie.” The filmmakers faced each other in the best director category, where Nolan triumphed.

It was two hours before “Barbie,” the year’s biggest hit with more than $1.4 billion in ticket sales, won an award Sunday. Billie Eilish’s “What Was I Made For?” took best song, and swiftly after, “Barbie” took the Globes’ new honor for “cinematic and box office achievement.” Some thought that award might go to Taylor Swift, whose “Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour” also set box-office records. Swift, though, remains winless in five Globe nods.

Margot Robbie, star and producer of “Barbie,” accepted the award in a pink gown modeled after 1977’s Superstar Barbie.

“We’d like to dedicate this to every single person on the planet who dressed up and went to the greatest place on Earth: the movie theaters,” said Robbie.

“Barbie” and “Oppenheimer,” two blockbusters brought together by a common release date, also faced off in the best screenplay category. But in an upset, Justine Triet and Arthur Harari won for the script to the French courtroom drama “Anatomy of a Fall.” Later, Triet’s film picked up best international film, too.

Though the Globes have no direct correlation with the Academy Awards, they can boost campaigns at a crucial juncture. Oscar nomination voting starts Thursday, and the twin sensations of Barbenheimer remain frontrunners.

Other contenders loom, though, like “Poor Things” and “The Holdovers.”

Paul Giamatti and Da’Vine Joy Randolph both won for Alexander Payne’s “The Holdovers.” Giamatti, reuniting with Payne two decades after “Sideways,” won best actor and Randolph won for her supporting performance as a grieving woman in the 1970s-set boarding school drama.

“Oh, Mary you have changed my life,” Randolph said of her character. “You have made me feel seen in so many ways that I have never imagined.”

Hayao Miyazaki’s “The Boy and the Heron” won best animated film, an upset over “Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse.”

‘SUCCESSION’ AND ‘THE BEAR’ LEAD TV WINNERS

The final season of “Succession” cleaned up on the television side. It won best drama series for the third time, a mark that ties a record set by “Mad Men” and “The X-Files.” Three stars from the HBO series also won: Matt Macfadyen, Sarah Snook and Kieran Culkin.

“It is bittersweet, but things like this make it rather sweeter,” said “Succession” creator Jesse Armstrong.

Hulu’s “The Bear” also came away with a trio of awards, including best comedy series. Jeremy Allen White won for the second time, but this time he had company. Ayo Edebiri won her first Globe for her leading performance in the Hulu show’s second season. She thanked the assistants of her agents and managers.

“To the people who answer my emails, you’re the real ones,” said Edebiri.

“Beef” won three awards: best limited series as well as acting awards for Ali Wong and Steven Yeun.

The Globes also added a new stand-up special award. That went, surprisingly, to Ricky Gervais, who didn’t attend the show he so often hosted. Some expected Chris Rock to win for “Selective Outrage,” his stand-up response to the Will Smith slap.

THE GLOBES COMEBACK

A few years ago, the Golden Globes were on the cusp of collapse. After The Los Angeles Times reported that the HFPA had no Black members, Hollywood boycotted the organization. The 2022 Globes were all but canceled and taken off TV. After reforms, the Globes returned to NBC last year in a one-year deal, but the show was booted to Tuesday evening. With Jerrod Carmichael hosting, the telecast attracted 6.3 million viewers, a new low on NBC and a far cry from the 20 million that once tuned in.

The Golden Globes were acquired by Eldridge Industries and Dick Clark Productions, which Penske Media owns, and turned into a for-profit venture. The HFPA (which typically numbered around 90 voters) was dissolved and a group of some 300 entertainment journalists from around the world now vote for the awards.

Questions still remain about the Globes’ long-term future, but their value to Hollywood studios remains providing a marketing boost to awards contenders. (The Oscars won’t be held until March 10.) This year, because of the actors and writers strikes, the Globes are airing ahead of the Emmys, which were postponed to Jan. 15.

With movie ticket sales still 20% off the pre-pandemic pace and the industry facing a potentially perilous 2024 at the box office, Hollywood needed the Golden Globes as much as it ever has.

The most comical evaluation on the Globes came from presenters Will Ferrell and Kristen Wiig, who blamed the awards body for the constant interruption of a song they found irresistible while otherwise solemnly presenting best actor in a comedy or musical movie.

A furious, dancing Ferrell shouted: “The Golden Globes have not changed!”

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This story has been updated to correct Kristen Wiig’s first name.

JAKE COYLE

Coyle is a film writer and critic for The Associated Press.