(Agencies)
Updated: 2007-11-01 17:37

Responding to industry pressure as well as the film industry's growing internationalism, the organizers of the Golden Globes are changing their rules to allow foreign-language U.S. productions in the two best picture categories.

The Hollywood Foreign Press Assn.'s rules won't take effect until next year, meaning that as many as three awards contenders this year -- "The Diving Bell and the Butterfly," "The Kite Runner" and "Lust, Caution" -- won't be eligible for best picture and will instead go into the foreign-language category.

As of the 2009 Globes, movies for which the "country of origin is the United States" will qualify for best picture, drama, and best picture, comedy or musical, even if the majority of a film's dialogue isn't in English. Those pictures won't, in turn, be eligible for foreign-language film.

There will be no hard-and-fast criteria for what constitutes "country of origin," the HFPA said; each movie will be judged on its own merit.

The move is a significant shift step for the HFPA, which has long maintained an English-only policy for best picture nominees, presumably as a way of generating more glitz in its banner categories.

But after several instances of mainstream U.S. movies being relegated to the foreign category, including last year's best picture Oscar nominee "Letters From Iwo Jima," the HFPA decided to re-evaluate. "Since U.S.-based directors and producers are now making films in a foreign language with increasing frequency, the membership felt it was more equitable that these movies should compete in the best motion picture categories," HFPA president Jorge Camara said.

Still, the rule change could open up a Pandora's box for movies whose directors, producers and locations cross boundaries. Director Ang Lee's Chinese-language "Lust, Caution," for instance, was shot abroad and partly produced by foreign entities but financed and distributed by U.S. companies -- with a mixed cast and crew.

The Oscars, of course, have long allowed any movie in its best picture category regardless of language or country. The change also will make the Globes more like the Oscars in another respect, since it will whittle down the potential nominees for foreign language (though unlike the Oscars, the Globes will continue to allow multiple submissions from the same country).