Why Family-Friendly Movies Triumph at the Box Office
By Movieguide® Contributor
What is the best indicator of box office success? Is it diversity—or the lack thereof? Or is it that moral, family-friendly movies appeal to a larger audience?
With the massive success of movies like TOP GUN: MAVERICK, SPIDER-MAN: NO WAY HOME, THE SUPER MARIO BROS. MOVIE and SOUND OF FREEDOM, the Hollywood Reporter wondered if “movies starring white male protagonists…are the most reliable guarantor of high ticket grosses.”
A study found that studios typically funnel more money and resources into movies with white male leads because of their broad appeal. These movies have larger marketing campaigns and are released in more theaters, giving them more opportunities to earn money.
However, when statistically controlled for production budget, marketing spend and distribution, the researchers revealed that gender and race play no role in the box office performance of a movie.
“It is the way that executives support movies about white men that drives their success, not the protagonists themselves,” said lead author Stacy L. Smith. “The reality is that studios and distributors can sell films that they want to sell.”
While marketing and distribution play a role in a movie’s success, the study fails to address other factors that affect a movie’s performance.
The box office has repeatedly shown that family-friendly, moral and Christian-based themes are the best indicators of a movie’s success. Most of the top-grossing movies in recent years have fallen under one or more of these categories.
SPIDER-MAN: NO WAY HOME, starring Tom Holland, became the third-highest-grossing movie of all time, scoring $1.8 billion worldwide. This is thanks to its focus on redemption and doing the right thing even when it’s hard, as Movieguide® said in its review.
Tom Cruise’s summer 2022 blockbuster TOP GUN: MAVERICK “has a strong moral, Pro-American, patriotic worldview. It also tells a strong redemptive story leading to sacrifice, forgiveness and reconciliation.” These values earned the hit over $1 billion at the global box office.
This year, THE SUPER MARIO BROS. MOVIE promoted “a strong moral message about brotherhood, sacrifice, and working together to overcome evil.” It became the tenth animated film to amass $1 billion worldwide.
Meanwhile, plenty of movies with millions of dollars put into them have lackluster showings in theaters.
Disney, for example, has spent billions on its recent projects and has failed to find success. This failure is largely due to its insistence on promoting an immoral agenda that does not connect with most families.
Disney’s recent movie LIGHTYEAR struggled to land with audiences because it focused on “LGBT, radical feminist, anti-male ideology…[and] attack[ing] the nuclear family.”
Alternatively, a movie like SOUND OF FREEDOM found incredible success despite an extremely small budget for a full-length Hollywood movie and limited distribution when it was first released. The story’s strong Christian values, however, helped it become a breakout hit.
While many in the media happily speculate about what makes a movie successful or not, they fail to acknowledge that family-friendly content is the most consistent factor in these box office successes.
Movieguide® founder Dr. Ted Baehr said:
When we started MOVIEGUIDE® in 1985, the major studios in Hollywood released few movies with any positive Christian content or values at all – less than 1% and often only one or two! Incredibly, in 2019, at least 169, or 63.77%, of the major movies released theatrically by the movie industry contained at least some positive Christian, redemptive content.
Studios have begun to notice the draw of moral content, with many launching faith-based branches to cater to this audience.
Movieguide® previously reported:
The success of faith-based media in recent years has proven that Jesus still has the power to draw large audiences.
Media like THE CHOSEN, JESUS REVOLUTION and THE SOUND OF FREEDOM have drawn larger audiences than mainstream Hollywood would have ever predicted.
The recent success of faith-based media has baffled experts who expected the popularity of Christian content to decline as Christianity has declined in America. According to the Pew Research Center, the number of adults in America who identify as Christian has dropped from 78% in 2007 to 63% in 2021. Meanwhile, the audience for faith-based movies has only grown.
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