'One Battle After Another' and 'Hamnet' take top honors at Golden Globes

"One Battle After Another" led the way at the 83rd Golden Globes Sunday night with four awards, including for best picture in the musical or comedy category and for Paul Thomas Anderson as Best Director and Teyana Taylor for Best Supporting Actress. "Hamnet,"  Chloé Zhao’s Shakespearean tale based on Maggie O'Farrell's bestselling novel, took best picture drama and one of its stars, Jessie Buckley, won best actress in a motion picture, drama. Brazil's non-English drama “The Secret Agent,” "Sinners" and the animated hit “KPop Demon Hunters," along with "Hamnet," vied for second place with two awards apiece.

Timothée Chalamet, scoring a win for the ping-pong based film "Marty Supreme" as best actor in musical or comedy category, recalled his past four Globe losses and said, "I’d be lying if I said those moments didn’t make this moment that much sweeter."

As the first major event of awards season, the Globes did its best to radiate confidence in what looks like an uncertain 2026 for Hollywood. Box office has yet to return to pre-pandemic levels. The streaming platforms that filled the void are becoming dominant, as Netflix’s potential purchase of Warner Bros. illustrates. And all the major studios have been paring back on their yearly output.

Returning host Nikki Glaser pressed a number of these sensitive buttons but mostly kept her tone playful. She opened by taking bids for Warner Bros. — "Do I hear $5?" — and ventured one very sharp barb about the recent changes at CBS News, "the newest place where you can see B.S. news." She also mocked the Globes’ new award for Best Podcast with a faux commercial that poked fun at a format that seems to be increasingly focused on fawning over celebrities. (Nevertheless, the award went to "Good Hang with Amy Poehler," which does just that.)

Elsewhere, though, Glaser needled the stars where their skin was probably thickest, calling the diminutive Kevin Hart "the Rock’s plus-one-half" and congratulating Leonardo DiCaprio on his many accomplishments "before your girlfriend turned 30."

In their acceptance speeches, winners consistently treated their awards as personally meaningful, a sign that their profession still mattered, or both.

Stellan Skarsgård, the Swedish actor who won Supporting Actor in "Sentimental Value," encouraged viewers to see his movie in a theater. "Cinema should be seen in the cinemas," he said.

An emotional Rose Byrne, winning a best actress award for "If I Had Legs I’d Kick You" — a pitch-black comedy filmed and set in Montauk — gratefully told the audience, "This is a tiny film, so this is a huge thing to be up here."

Taylor dedicated her award to "my brown sisters and little brown girls watching tonight. Our light does not need permission to shine, we belong in every room we walk into."

And producer Mike DeLuca grew emotional as Anderson, winning for director, thanked him for backing "One Battle After Another" and other nominated films for Warner Bros. "That’s how you get a ‘Sinners,’ that’s how you get a ‘Weapons," Anderson said. (Warner was the night’s second-most nominated studio, with 16 nods, well behind Neon, an upstart with 21.)

Even the ill-defined award for Cinematic and Box Office Achievement, which went to the inventive horror-musical "Sinners," was treated with respect by director Ryan Coogler. "I just want to thank the audience for showing up," he said. The film also took home Original Score, Motion Picture.

The Globes introduced a couple of new wrinkles intended to liven up the broadcast. When nominees’ names were read aloud, an on-screen pointer identified where they were sitting in the audience. Periodic commentary came from "Entertainment Tonight" host Kevin Fraser and Variety’s Marc Malkin, both situated in a sound booth. And, perhaps inspired by the growing craze for sports betting, the Globes handicapped a number of awards by showing odds from Polymarket, a website whose accuracy often sapped the suspense out of the evening.

As always, the wins and losses at Sunday’s Globes may have some effect on voting for Oscar nominees, which this year begins Monday.

In the TV category, "Adolescence," The Studio" and "The Pitt" took home multiple awards.

By Rafer Guzmán

rafer.guzman@newsday.com