The Hollywood Foreign Press Association (HFPA), a group of freelance journalists that for years owned and operated the annual Golden Globe Awards, has sued the show’s new owner over what it says was an unlawful takeover.
The lawsuit, filed on July 28 in the US District Court for the Central District of California, claims that Penske Media fraudulently acquired the Golden Globes in a bid to monopolise the lucrative advertising business driven by Hollywood studios chasing awards.
Penske Media, which also owns the Hollywood trade papers Variety, The Hollywood Reporter, Deadline and others, acquired the Golden Globes in 2023 for an undisclosed sum after press reports, initially from Los Angeles Times, uncovered that members of the small but powerful HFPA had engaged in financial self-dealing.
The group was also criticised for a lack of diversity. An industry-wide outcry and boycott by talent and publicists led NBC to cancel the 2022 Globes telecast.
Penske Media, the lawsuit said, first “surreptitiously instigated” the outcry and then leveraged its publications to fuel it.
The goal was to devalue the foreign press association to make it vulnerable to acquisition, the suit argues. The association is seeking damages of at least US$150 million (S$193.4 million) and an order to undo the acquisition.
In a statement, Daniel A. Saunders, a lawyer for the association, described Penske Media’s “brazen attempts to destroy the Hollywood Foreign Press Association, all to consolidate even greater monopolistic control in Hollywood and freeze out competing foreign journalists”.
When reached for comment, Penske Media pointed to a statement from a spokesperson for the Golden Globes who said the sale had closed more than three years ago and was not subject to reversal.
“This latest lawsuit continues the absurdity and irrationality that the industry has come to expect from the defunct organisation formerly known as the HFPA,” the spokesperson said. NYTIMES
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This article originally appeared in The New York Times.
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