THE COLOR PURPLE’s Success Suffers Due to Immoral Content

Published: January 3, 2024

THE COLOR PURPLE’s Success Suffers Due to Immoral Content

By Movieguide® Contributor

Despite a strong Christmas Day opening, THE COLOR PURPLE’s success plummeted due to immoral content.

THE COLOR PURPLE is a musical adaptation of the 1985 movie directed by Steven Spielberg. It opened to $18 million – the largest Christmas Day opening in over a decade. However, the movie’s success was short-lived, with a $7 million gross on the second day followed by a $3.8 million gross on the third.

The plummeting success of the movie can be largely attributed to its immoral elements, which mar an otherwise redemptive story. A portion of Movieguide®’s review reads:

THE COLOR PURPLE musical version tells an emotional, redemptive, heartrending story of repentance, forgiveness and redemption, with overt positive references to God. However, the heroine has a lesbian affair with her husband’s mistress, a popular blues singer. THE COLOR PURPLE also suffers from many light obscenities and other lewd behavior. It also tells a feminist story of female empowerment against toxic masculinity. So, the uplifting Christian content in THE COLOR PURPLE comes with some difficult baggage, most of which is really superfluous to the main story.

While the original movie includes many of the same elements, the musical remake brought some to the forefront, including the lesbian relationship, which, although present in the original novel, was muted in Spielberg’s rendition.

The movie’s dropping success is likely due to this immoral content, something that audiences do not desire to see. A study from last October found that nearly half of all teenagers and young adults believe that sex and romance are too prevalent in media, and they desire to see more platonic friendships on the screen.

Unfortunately, THE COLOR PURPLE leaned into sex and romance along with immoral themes, leading to its rapid decline in popularity and success.

Movieguide® previously reported:

While movies containing strong moral and Christian content have outperformed immoral content at the box office, mainstream media continues to find other reasons for their success.

In “The Simple Secret to the ‘Super Mario’ Animation Studio’s Success,” published by The Wall Street Journal, the success of Illumination Studios is explained as coming from its reliance on proven franchises and IPs, creation of films that people of all ages want to see, and the decline of Disney’s Pixar and Walt Disney Animation Studios.

“[An] explanation for Illumination’s success is the studio’s reliance on tried-and-true intellectual property as the basis of its stories” the article states. “The first movie to feature the minions–now an indelible part of pop culture–came out in 2012 and has spawned four sequels and spinoffs.”