2024 Golden Globes predictions: Which movies are favorites to win?

The Golden Globes return after a turbulent couple of years of setbacks and internal issues. The 81st edition of the awards ceremony, in a restructured format, will take place in Los Angeles on 7 January 2024 and this morning, the full list of nominees was announced - the best movies and television series, national and international productions, during the past year.

As expected, Greta Gerwig’s Barbie starring Margot Robbie and Christopher Nolan’s epic Oppenheimer are both anticipated to do well at the gala with nine and eight nominations respectively. However, there could be a few surprises in store too - Killers of the Flower Moon and Poor Things weigh in with seven nominations each.

Robbie comes alive in Barbieworld

Margot Robbie’s portrayal of Mattel’s mass produced, toy fashion doll as a stereotypical Barbie whose idyllic life in Barbieland suddenly starts to fracture as she experiences mental and physical issues - projected by the human girl who plays with her in the real world (Sasha, played by Ariana Greenblatt). It can only be resolved by visiting the real world where Barbie meets Beach Ken (Ryan Gosling), whose affections she had previously ignored. Barbie ends up deciding to live in the real world as a human, changing her name to Barbara Handler

Both Robbie and Gosling are among the nominees for the Best Performance in a Motion Picture - Musical or Comedy awards, while the movie, which has grossed $1.44 billion since release and is the big favorite to win the best film award in the comedy category.

‘The destroyer of worlds’

Oppenheimer, a three-hour biographical thriller, based on the life and work of The Father of the Atomic Bomb, Robert Oppenheimer, premiered in the summer and since then, has grossed almost $1 billion at the box office worldwide. It received positive reviews for its breathtaking visual effects and cinematography - attributes which make it the first choice to land the best film award in the drama category.

Producer Emma Thomas told Deadline about the many and varied difficulties that the production team had to overcome, while staying within budget. “The script was enormously ambitious for the amount of money that we had and those structures within which we were having to work helped inform what it ended up being in a very creative and magical way - because it just forced people to be smart. For example, the Oppenheimers’ home in Los Alamos and the fact that we could only shoot in one direction - you were willing to go there and have a reverse that was a washing line… for me, that is one of the most iconic images in the movie”.