Following the Golden Globe Awards on Jan. 11, the 2025-26 awards season has reached yet another meaningful turning point.
Although the ceremony is infamous for rarely offering definitive Oscars answers, we can start to see which films may transcend initial award season predictions. Although this year’s Globes did give the presumed Oscar Best Picture winner Paul Thomas Anderson’s “One Battle After Another” four awards — Best Motion Picture – Musical or Comedy, Best Director, Best Supporting Actress and Best Screenplay — they also managed to award several underdogs and, in doing so, crucially reshape three races.
The most obvious shift came in Best Motion Picture – Drama, as “Hamnet” managed to emerge from a crowded field including “Sentimental Value,” “The Secret Agent,” “Frankenstein” and “It Was Just An Accident” to overtake the presumed winner, “Sinners.” While this result is not a seismic upset, it still registers as a notable disruption to widespread expectations going into the night. In the weeks leading up to the ceremony, “Sinners” emerged as a favorite in many forecasts, jumping from a 32% chance to win on Jan. 5 to a 71% chance on Jan. 11 in Award Expert’s community consensus, a crowdsourced awards prediction platform. Much of this increase can be attributed to the continued momentum for “Sinners” among critics and the lack of consolidation behind a single competitor, but clearly, there was still enough room for “Hamnet” to capitalize on and gain a high-profile win.
“Hamnet” has quietly remained in the upper tier of the Best Picture race for most of the season. In recent weeks, it started to miss out on small nominations in technical guilds, such as the American Society of Cinematographers Awards, leading to its status slightly dipping. However, this Golden Globe win acts as a course correction, reaffirming its place among the top three contenders. Importantly, although this was a substantial loss for “Sinners,” the film still secured wins for Original Score and Cinematic and Box Office Achievement, proving that it continues to have sizable support among voters. Altogether, these wins add some necessary chaos to a category that has been largely stagnant for months.
If the Best Drama outcome worked to clarify which contenders outline the top tier, then Best Supporting Actor did the exact opposite, with the winner only underscoring how complicated the category has been this year. Stellan Skarsgård’s win for his role as Gustav Borg in “Sentimental Value” comes amid the most crowded acting race of the year. Only a few weeks ago, critics largely coalesced around Skarsgård and Benicio Del Toro for his performance in “One Battle After Another,” with Del Toro holding 18 wins among regional critics and Skarsgård close behind with 11 as of Jan. 14.
However, in a lesson learned almost every year, momentum does not always translate from local critics to major ceremonies. Skarsgård’s performance was viewed as more likely to resonate with Globes voters, a theory that was seemingly confirmed last night. However, the race had already been reshuffled by Jacob Elordi’s shock win for his role in “Frankenstein” at the Critics’ Choice Awards on Jan. 4.
Skarsgård’s victory is likely to place him back in the lead for the Oscar, but his absence from the Screen Actors Guild (SAG) nominations prevents this lead from being uncontested, especially when considering that only two individuals in the last 20 years have won an Oscar while not being nominated at SAG. Elordi, on the other hand, seems firmly rooted in second place and has a plausible path to retaking the lead if he can come out victorious at SAG. Additionally, Del Toro and Sean Penn, who has quietly accumulated 7 critics’ group wins for his role in “One Battle After Another,” still remain in play. Rather than helping narrow the field, the Globes have only ensured that the Oscar for Supporting Actor will remain unpredictable deep into the season.
Perhaps the night’s most important win came in Best International Feature, where “The Secret Agent” provided a true upset. For much of the year, standouts “Sentimental Value” and “It Was Just An Accident,” which won the top two prizes respectively at the Cannes Film Festival, seemed poised to dominate the international conversation, but, recently, the race has undergone a dramatic reversal as “The Secret Agent” has now earned wins at both the Critics’ Choice and the Golden Globes, including a Best Drama Actor victory for Wagner Moura. The parallels to last year’s “I’m Still Here” are uncanny, with both films being Brazilian productions that won Globe Drama acting prizes for their leads. Ultimately, “I’m Still Here” secured the Oscar for Best International Feature and even a surprise Best Picture nomination. “The Secret Agent” looks to be even stronger and is now rumored to be eyeing a Best Director nomination for auteur Kleber Mendonça Filho from the Academy.
As a whole, the Golden Globes did not simplify many races. “Hamnet” reclaimed footing among the top contenders; Skarsgård held his own in an increasingly contested acting race; and “The Secret Agent” proved that it has hopes beyond International Feature. The night promised an award season not so different from previous ones: unpredictable and ever-changing.
