Golden Globes: Hollywood stars Michelle Yeoh, Will Ferrell, Angela Bassett will present awards

Yeoh is returning to the Globes a year after she won best actress in a drama film for ‘Everything Everywhere All at Once,’ delivering a poignant acceptance speech (and a semi-serious threat to beat up the piano player who started to cut her off).

Wednesday’s announcement is the latest indicator that stars are likely to return to the show as it continues to attempt a return to form after several scandal-tarnished years. The show is known for its celebration of film and television and as an early stop for awards season contenders. Scandals have led to a membership revamp and a new broadcaster for the Jan. 7 show, but a key question remains: Will viewers tune in?

Here’s more to know about the 81st Golden Globe Awards.

WHAT’S NEW WITH THE GOLDEN GLOBES?

The 81st Golden Globe Awards will be the first major broadcast of awards season, with a new home on CBS. And while to audiences it might look similar on the surface, it’s been a tumultuous few years behind the scenes following a bombshell report in the Los Angeles Times. The 2021 report found that there were no Black members in the Hollywood Foreign Press Association, which voted on the awards.

Stars and studios boycotted the Globes and NBC refused to air it in 2022 as a result. After the group added journalists of colour to its ranks and instituted other reforms to address ethical concerns, the show came back in January 2023 in a one-year probationary agreement with NBC. The network did not opt to renew.

In June, billionaire Todd Boehly was granted approval to dissolve the HFPA and reinvent the Golden Globes as a for-profit organisation. Its assets were acquired by Boehly’s Eldridge Industries, along with Dick Clark Productions, a group that is owned by Penske Media whose assets also include Variety, Deadline, The Hollywood Reporter, Rolling Stone and Billboard.

The show has also added a new award for stand-up comedy, with Chris Rock, Amy Schumer and former Globes host Ricky Gervais among the nominees.

WHO’S HOSTING THE GLOBES?

Comedian Jo Koy, who has headlined several Netflix specials and starred in last year’s comedy film ‘Easter Sunday,’ will host the Globes.

Organisers cited his “infectious energy and relatable humour” in announcing Koy would headline the event.

Hosting the Globes typically requires serving a mix of biting humour to the audience of film and television stars and keeping the ceremony from getting too sloppy.

Previous hosts include Ricky Gervais, whose jokes were particularly caustic, the duo of Tina Fey and Amy Poehler and last year’s emcee, Jerrod Carmichael.

GOLDEN GLOBE NOMINEES

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 ‘Oppenheimer,’ which scored eight nominations, including best picture drama and for actors Cillian Murphy, Robert Downey Jr. and Emily Blunt.

Here are a selection of other nominees:

Best drama movie: ‘Anatomy of a Fall’; ‘Killers of the Flower Moon’; ‘Maestro’; ‘Oppenheimer’; ‘Past Lives’; ‘The Zone of Interest.’

Best movie musical or comedy category: ‘Air’; ‘American Fiction’; ‘Barbie’; ‘The Holdovers’; ‘May December’; ‘Poor Things.’

Animated film: ‘The Boy and the Heron’; ‘Elemental’; ‘Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse’; ‘The Super Mario Bros. Movie’; ‘Suzume’; ‘Wish.’

WHAT ARE THE GLOBES KNOWN FOR?

The Golden Globe Awards had long been one of the highest-profile awards season broadcasts, second only to the Oscars.

The show was touted as an 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.

But the voting body was a small group of around 87 members who wielded incredible influence in the industry and often accepted lavish gifts and travel from studios and awards publicists eager to court favour and win votes.

Some years, the HFPA were 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. The show also recognises television.

Before the expose and public relations crisis though, no one in the industry took much umbrage with who was voting on the awards. The show had become an important part of the Hollywood awards ecosystem, a platform for Oscar hopefuls and was, until recently, a reliable ratings draw. As of 2019, it was still pulling in nearly 19 million viewers to the broadcast. This year, NBC’s Tuesday night broadcast got its smallest audience ever for a traditional broadcast, with 6.3 million viewers.