Golden Globe Nominations Feature Wide Mix

Golden Globes voters nominated an unusually wide mix of movies Monday, pulling smaller dramas like “Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri” deeper into the Oscar race, throwing support to Ridley Scott’s last-minute effort to erase Kevin Spacey from “All the Money in the World” and embracing diversity among the nominees.

The largest number of nominations — seven — went to Guillermo del Toro’s fantasy “The Shape of Water,” including ones for best drama, director, actress (Sally Hawkins), supporting actress (Octavia Spencer) and supporting actor (Richard Jenkins.) Close behind with six apiece were “The Post,” a Watergate-era drama about the struggles of Katharine Graham to lead The Washington Post, and “Three Billboards,” about a mother (Frances McDormand, a nominee for best actress) who pushes local authorities to investigate her daughter’s murder.

The other nominees for best drama were “Dunkirk,” Christopher Nolan’s World War II epic, and the gay romance “Call Me by Your Name.”

In the TV categories, expected nominees like “Big Little Lies” and “The Handmaid’s Tale” were joined by newcomers like “The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel.”

Long seen as the most unserious stop on Hollywood’s awards circuit, the Golden Globes are handed out by the Hollywood Foreign Press Association, a group of mostly freelance journalists, only 89 of whom vote. Studios see members as easy to manipulate, a reputation the group contends is long outdated. (A lawsuit in 2011 alleged payola and kickbacks. The organization settled out of court.)

And top prizes are split into dramatic and comedic categories, often in confounding ways. This time around, the satirical horror film “Get Out” was nominated in the best musical or comedy category. (Its backers at Universal submitted it there, hoping to improve its chances, creating an internet brush fire last month.) “Get Out” will compete against the P.T. Barnum musical “The Greatest Showman”; the figure-skating dark comedy “I, Tonya”; the movie-about-a-movie “The Disaster Artist”; and Greta Gerwig’s coming-of-age comedic drama “Lady Bird.

But timing is everything in show business, and Academy Award voters (some 8,400) cannot help but pay attention to the Globes, which are bestowed in the middle of the Oscar nomination process. The 75th Globes ceremony will be hosted by Seth Meyers and broadcast live on NBC on Jan. 7. The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences will announce Oscar nominations Jan. 23.