Hollywood’s Golden Globe intersection: NBC will not broadcast 2022 concerts and Tom Cruise returns with awards – news

On Monday, NBC announced that it will not broadcast the Golden Globes next year.

This is a serious blow to the Hollywood Foreign Press Association (HFPA) which organizes the awards and sees its main partner “pull the rug”: every year it collects a fee of $ 60 million for the rights to show the gala of those who, for their media coverage, are the second most important awards in Hollywood After only the Oscars.

The HFPA last week approved a series of reforms designed to promote inclusion and diversity after months of criticism in the US film and television industry.

“We still believe that HFPA is committed to major reforms. However, changes of this scale require time and work, and we strongly believe HFPA needs time to do it right. As such, NBC will not be moving the Golden Globes for 2022. Assuming the organization is She is implementing her plan, we hope that we will be in a position to broadcast the program in January 2023. “, the statement said.

According to the deadlineToday, Tom Cruise also returned to HFPA headquarters with the three awards he won throughout his career, those for Best Actor for “Born on July 4” (1989) and “Jerry Maguire” (1996), and a minor actor for “Magnolia” (1999).

Since February, HFPA, a group of about 90 international journalists who have been presenting the film and television Golden Globes since 1944 and have had a major impact, has been recovering from an investigation by the LA Times in February that revealed that it had no black members. The organization has also faced accusations of lack of transparency in its procedures for many years.

The majority of HFPA members are reporters who usually work for well-known and respected media outlets in their countries, such as Le Figaro in France or El País in Spain.

But reputation has been damaged in the past by the presence of a surprising handful of characters with little or no known journalistic activity.

The organization has been repeatedly criticized for a lack of interest in black or minority artists, and is often overlooked in its nomination lists.

Last Thursday, May 7, association members overwhelmingly approved a series of measures, including increasing membership by 50% in the next eighteen months, hiring black journalists, as well as reforming the restrictive admission system.

The organization promised to become “a model for diversity, transparency and accountability in the industry,” but the plan was described by the anti-discrimination movement, Time Up, as a set of “cosmetic measures.”

The next day, Netflix and Amazon, which had been among the most nominated studios this year in movies and series, announced that they were no longer interested in working with HFPA until they made “more significant” changes.

Warner Bros. studio, which includes HBO, HBO Max, TNT and TBS, joined the boycott on Monday, writing a letter to HFPA Chairman Ali Saar indicating that the reform agenda was not “sufficient”. Until further notice, the film and television affiliates will refrain from any direct interaction with the organization, including the participation of stars in events organized by the Hollywood Foreign Journalists Association.

The message reads: “We are fully aware of the energy we had to invest in holding press conferences for a number of black artists and creators who undoubtedly presented valuable works. Often these same works went unnoticed in your nominations and awards.

Additionally, Warner Bros. He mentions “press conferences in which artists faced racist, gender-biased, and homophobic problems. For a long time, requests for special benefits and benefits and unprofessional requests were made to our teams and other people” in the industry.

These statements align with the accusations leveled by actress Scarlett Johansson, who said this weekend that she had refused for years to participate in HFPA press conferences due to “sexist questions and comments” which, according to her, “touched off sexual harassment”. .

Mark Ruffalo and David Oyelow have also reacted against the organization, while dozens of advertisers from agencies that typically work with HFPA have also distanced themselves.

Controversial Golden Globe

The Golden Globes were once seen as a waiting room for Oscars, but in recent years their significance has come into question and even parodied – for example, by the humorist Ricky Gervais, the host of various ceremonies.

But in an investigation published on February 22, the Los Angeles Times questioned the importance of HFPA still in the US film industry, stating that members of the organization receive large bonuses, the source of which is opaque, and not all of them are effective journalists.

Through interviews with more than 50 people, including production studio agents and producers and seven former and current members of the association, the American newspaper traced the picture of the questionable performance, the protectionism of its members and disconnected from reality.

More controversial is the assertion provided by the newspaper that among the 87 members there was no black person, and others represented several countries and still “many are not real journalists, because they do not pose a threat to anyone,” as described by one of the organization’s operatives.

This year, the association has come under widespread criticism for excluding from Golden Globe nominations several productions that could potentially be Oscar nominees, such as Spike Lee’s Da 5 Bloods, Judas and the Black Messiah by Shaka King, and Rainey: The Mother of the Blues. Written by George C. Wolf.

The newspaper also found, as a non-profit association, that HFPA had “significant payments” for its members – in 2020 amounting to 1.6 million euros – to belong to various committees and to perform certain tasks.

The association defended itself, saying that there were biases against members of the association, that the accounts of the association had been audited and that the practice of financial compensation for members was based on what was already practiced in relation to other non-profit organizations.

Every year, the awards ceremony numbers between 18 and 20 million viewers, a generous figure that is still seen by film studios as a major point in the Oscars calendar.

“The problem is that studios need them,” a Hollywood studio agent, who declined to be named, admitted.

This year, like other events, the Golden Globes also witnessed a historic drop in viewership due to the pandemic: there are no well-known films among the nominees and the usual date was changed in early January, when it took advantage of the sports program’s audience. The, February 28 concert by Tina Fey and Amy Poehler and adapted to the default look, with almost no red carpet and with stars in the house, attracted only 6.9 million viewers.