A film about OpenAI enters the Globes as a comedy. Can it win the comedy prize?
Neon has entered Artificial, a dark film about the people who run OpenAI, as a comedy at the Golden Globes. The winners are named on 10 January.
What happened
Just before the Golden Globes deadline on , Neon entered Artificial in the musical or comedy races rather than drama.
Artificial will compete as a comedy at the Golden Globes. On , the last day for entries, the film company Neon entered Luca Guadagnino’s film in the musical or comedy races, not in drama. The film is about the people who run the artificial intelligence company OpenAI, with Andrew Garfield as its boss, Sam Altman.
The Golden Globes rules say a film “primarily intended to have a serious or dramatic tone” with “comedic overtones or elements” belongs in drama. A film that is mainly comic but has dramatic parts belongs in comedy. The organisers decide at their “sole discretion”, and there is no appeal against the final decision. On they refused to let the Michael Jackson film Michael compete as a musical, and they accepted Obsession, a film about a woman robbed of control over her mind and body, as a comedy.
Monday, December 7, 2026 at 5:00 a.m. PST Announcement of nominations for the 84th Annual Golden Globes
Golden Globes timetable
Many people expected Artificial to be entered as a drama. The Hollywood Reporter compares it with The Social Network, which competed as a drama in 2010 and won four Globes, including best film. It also points to “audible laughter in screenings” and a script by the humour writer Simon Rich.
Artificial now competes for best comedy or musical film against Wild Horse Nine, The Debut, The Invite, Project Hail Mary and others. Amazon MGM, which dropped Artificial in June, is in the same race with Project Hail Mary. Nominations come on and the winners on .
Sources: The Hollywood Reporter, Variety (2, 3, 4), Golden Globes (2)
The Pattern
We looked for cases where a studio entered a film for the Golden Globes as a comedy or musical, while the press before the nominations called it a drama, a horror or a crime film, or a close choice. All came after a 2016 rule that dramas with comedic overtones should be entered as dramas
. We counted only films that first showed at a big film festival, as Artificial did at the New York Film Festival. We found nine such festival films in 2017, 2020, 2024 and 2025. Five of them came in one year, 2024. (Variety; The Hollywood Reporter)
Show the other 7 cases
pretty dark films, as a comedy. It was nominated for best comedy film. Emilia Pérez won. (The Hollywood Reporter; Variety; Variety)
The Read
None of the nine films won the comedy prize. In 2024 Variety named two films leading the race before the nominations, Emilia Pérez and Wicked, and Emilia Pérez won. In 2025 the press named One Battle After Another as the film to beat, and it won. The first step is the nomination itself: four of the nine films got one.
There are reasons for doubt. Five of the nine films came in one year, and the same voters decide every time. Looking back to 2009, at least 28 films were entered this way and four of them won: American Hustle, The Martian, Once Upon a Time in Hollywood and One Battle After Another, entered as a comedy without a festival premiere. This year there is no single favourite, as Variety’s Oscar forecast of puts five films from this race in its top ten.
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