And the Golden Globes go to… a new owner.
Dick Clark Productions and Eldridge announced Monday that they have taken over the awards show, first held in 1944, from the Hollywood Foreign Press Association (HFPA). Dick Clark Productions and its collaborators will oversee planning, hosting and producing duties for the ceremony honoring film and TV, which returns Jan. 7 but must first seek a new agreement to broadcast the awards.
The HFPA has been plagued by scandal amid reports about the organization’s lack of diversity and corruption by its members, who represent overseas press outlets.
In February 2021, the Los Angeles Times reported that none of the HFPA’s 87 voting journalists were Black. This was on top of the HFPA largely ignoring critically acclaimed projects by artists of color at the 2021 Golden Globe Awards, prompting NBC to bail. After three-time winner Tom Cruise returned his trophies in protest, and studios and publicists threatened a boycott of the group, the 2022 pandemic-era Globes unfolded without an audience or nominees in attendance.
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Scarlett Johansson, Netflix and others called on the industry to refuse to work with the HFPA until it becomes more diverse. In October 2021, the HFPA, which had vowed to improve its representation, announced it was adding 21 new members. Of them, six were Black, six Latino, five Asian and four Middle Eastern/North African.
In a separate controversy, Brendan Fraser, a nominee this year for his emotional and transformational performance in “The Whale,” skipped the ceremony. Fraser announced he wouldn’t attend the awards after accusing the group’s former president Philip Berk of groping him at an HFPA luncheon in 2003. Berk was ousted in 2021 for a tweet calling Black Lives Matter a “hate movement.”
But the Globes remain without a broadcast partner for now. NBC signed a one-year deal to air the Globes this year after bowing out in 2022 in the wake of the controversy.
Monday’s announcement over the ownership change revealed “the transaction will result in the wind down of the HFPA and its membership. The proceeds … plus the existing resources of the HFPA, will transition into a newly formed Golden Globe Foundation which will continue the legacy HPFA’s history of entertainment-related charitable giving.”
Contributing: Marco della Cava
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