Golden Globes: ‘Emilia Perez’ leads the charge with 10 nominations

Hollywood’s awards season heats up Sunday at the Golden Globes, with surreal narco-thriller musical Emilia Perez – about a Mexican drug lord who transitions to life as a woman – leading the charge.

Jacques Audiard’s genre-defying film earned 10 nominations, the most ever for a musical or comedy film.

These included star transgender actress Karla Sofia Gascon, who plays the title character and co-stars Selena Gomez and Zoe Saldana.

Emilia Perez – almost entirely in Spanish – hopes to throw down the gauntlet in the race to the Academy Awards, which will take place in early March.

“The far and away favourite has got to be Emilia Perez,” Deadline Awards columnist Pete Hammond told AFP.

“I think it’s got the international thing going for it, and it just swept the European Film Awards.”

The Golden Globes offer separate awards for dramas and comedies/musicals, widening the field of stars who will walk the red carpet and offering more options for Academy voters who will soon cast ballots for the Oscar nominations.

Emilia Perez started its march towards Hollywood glory at the Cannes Film Festival, where it won the Jury Prize.

Other nods for the film, streaming on Netflix after debuting in theatres, include best director, two entries for best original song, best score, best non-English language film, best screenplay, and best comedy or musical film.

‘Emilia Perez’ takes on ‘Wicked’ and ‘Challengers’

Emilia Perez will compete for top musical-comedy honours with the smash hit Wicked, Cannes darling Anora, tennis love triangle film Challengers, Jesse Eisenberg’s A Real Pain, and body horror film The Substance starring Demi Moore.

Wicked, the movie adaptation of the hit Broadway musical, earned four nominations, including for pop sensation Ariana Grande as the bubbly pink-clad Glinda and Tony winner Cynthia Erivo as the green-skinned Elphaba.

Hammond said he believed Wicked would be at a “disadvantage” at the Globes, given its lack of nominations in key categories. However, he favours Erivo to take home the prize for best lead actress.

She will compete with Gascon, Anora star Mikey Madison, Amy Adams from Nightbitch, Moore and Challengers star Zendaya.

Hammond calls The Substance his dark horse. He says its message about the perils of ageing in Hollywood could resonate with voters.

‘Brutalist’ vs ‘Conclave’

The Globes are in year two of a revamp. This follows a Los Angeles Times expose in 2021 that showed the awards’ voting body, the Hollywood Foreign Press Association (HFPA), had no black members.

Now under new ownership and with the HFPA disbanded, organisers hope to capitalise on a ratings bump registered last January and perhaps even burnish the gala’s status as a predictor of Oscar success.

Hammond says the reorganisation shines through with nominees like The Brutalist. The film stars Oscar winner Adrien Brody as a Hungarian Jewish architect. He survived the Holocaust and emigrated to the United States.

The Globes are “definitely more international. They’re more open to different kinds of movies,” he said, citing The Brutalist. The film earned seven nominations, behind Emilia Perez – as an example.

It will compete with the papal drama Conclave, a fictionalised account of high-stakes Holy See horse-trading. The film depicts how the death of a pope sends the church’s various factions into battle for its future. The drama is based on a novel by Robert Harris.

Conclave star Ralph Fiennes earned one of the film’s six nominations.

The two favourites will compete for the best drama prize with the Bob Dylan biopic A Complete Unknown, the sci-fi epic Dune: Part Two, Nickel Boys, and September 5, which examines the 1972 Munich Olympics hostage crisis from the media perspective.

“All of this is happening three days before the Oscars ballots go live,” Hammond said.

“So this could be influential in a tight year where these things could go any way.”

Globes nod to TV’s best

The Globes also honour the best in television. The comedy The Bear earned five nominations. The historical epic Shogun and comedy Only Murders in the Building are tied with four nominations each.

Comedian Nikki Glaser will host Sunday’s gala in Beverly Hills.

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