The Golden Globes Have A New Owner, And The Hollywood Foreign Press Is Shutting Down
The Hollywood Foreign Press Association is shutting down.
As of today, Dick Clark Productions and a company called Eldridge have acquired all of the Golden Globes' assets, rights, and properties from the Hollywood Foreign Press Association, a shadowy cabal of journalists who have found themselves embroiled in multiple controversies in recent years. The financial terms of the deal have not been revealed.
According to Variety, Eldridge and Dick Clark Productions (which had previously teamed with the HFPA to produce the televised awards show) will now fold the Golden Globes award show into DCP itself, shifting away from the HFPA's nonprofit status and opening the Globes up "to pursue many more commercial opportunities than were possible under the HFPA regime." The new owners will also reportedly use the assets and cash from the HFPA to create the Golden Globe Foundation, which will remain focused on the type of charitable giving the HFPA was doing during its tenure as the owners of the Golden Globes brand.
This is the end of an odd era in awards season history. The Globes, of course, are best known from the outside as the boozy, fun precursor to the Oscars. But while the Oscars are voted on by thousands of guild members and industry professionals who actually make movies, the HFPA (which voted on the awards and oversaw the awards ceremony) had long been known as a sketchy organization that wielded outsized power in the industry thanks to its tiny membership (there are only 95 full-time members) and multi-million dollar annual TV deals with NBC to ensure the show was broadcast nationwide. Folks in the know rolled their eyes at the Globes, but it seemed harmless enough. But in 2021, the L.A. Times reported that decisions were made to exclude people of color from the HFPA's ranks, while the group was also allegedly taking bribes from studios for nominations (or even awards). After a bumpy series of events that led to the show not being broadcast in 2022, the Globes came back this year.
So who will be voting on the awards now?
Helen Hoehne, the president of the HFPA, explained in a statement that the sale was approved by the association's full-time members. While early reports were vague about what would happen to the members of the Hollywood Foreign Press Association now that the organization is coming to an end, The L.A. Times reports that the plan is to "convert the nonprofit's 95 members into employees of a for-profit enterprise."
"How do you make people accountable?" Boehly said. "Well, you transition the organization from a not-for-profit with no accountability and bad governance to an organization where there is employee-based accountability."
After the recent controversies, the HFPA's membership swelled to over 300, and from the sound of it, those 300+ people will still be the ones voting on the awards going forward — they just won't be doing it as members of the Hollywood Foreign Press Association. The L.A. Times also says that the added voters will not become employees under the new ownership, but the 95 full-timers will be paid $75,000 a year to screen films and shows submitted for Golden Globes consideration, vote on the awards, create "content for the organization's website," and "[manage] materials related to the awards show and the group's history." In an era in which newsrooms are being gutted across the country, a cushy gig like that is incredibly rare.
Moreover, the 95 full-timers now have the opportunity to leave the group and take an extraordinary $225,000 as severance. How many members will actually take that deal remains to be seen, but again, given this organization's shady history, these terms seem exceptionally generous.
As the L.A. Times notes, NBC only renewed its deal to broadcast the Golden Globes for one year after the HFPA's recent tumultuous stretch, so it's unclear where or how the awards ceremony will be seen in 2024.