box office success of “Minions” this weekend — with a $115 million
total and a $27,000 per-screen average, the “Despicable Me” offshoot had one of the most successful animated openings of all time — is attributable to a number of factors.
On screen, it’s the recognizability quotient and the jibber-jabber charm of its main characters. In theaters it’s the diverse demographics, not least that, as Universal noted in its weekend box-office update, more than 40% of its opening weekend audience was Latino or African American.
And of course as an animated movie, "Minions" gave family audiences another strong option now that “Inside Out” is on the downslope of its run.
But "Minions" also came with another tag that may prove more durable than modern Hollywood tends to believe: the PG rating.
The PG rating has fallen on hard times in recent years. A study a few years ago showed that studios in the current era make about double the number of PG-13 movies as they do PG. And those that are made don't tend to rake in as much money as their more strictly rated counterparts.
A glance at the year-end box office top five shows just one PG movie last year. In 2013 there were two. In 2012 and 2011 and there were zero. In fact you have to go 13 years back to find the last time the majority of the year-end top five was comprised of PG- (or G-) rated movies.
This year could continue that trend, as prototypically PG-13 movies like “Jurassic World” and “Avengers: Age of Ultron” — you know, violence, but not so much that we won’t let in unaccompanied teenagers — continue to dominate. Studios make a simple calculation: An old-fashioned PG movie isn’t going to bring in older teenagers, a key constituency in today's moviegoing climate. And filmmakers of darker material like “The Hunger Games” and latter-day “Harry Potter” films want to make sure they can get some violence in too. So the PG becomes as forgotten as One-Eyed Willie's treasure.
At the same time, studios fear the dreaded R, which is perceived as an automatic ceiling on a summer or holiday action-adventure. So the PG-13 -- initially conceived as a rather narrow strip of middle ground between the soft- and the hard-core -- is now the go-to territory.
On screen, it’s the recognizability quotient and the jibber-jabber charm of its main characters. In theaters it’s the diverse demographics, not least that, as Universal noted in its weekend box-office update, more than 40% of its opening weekend audience was Latino or African American.
And of course as an animated movie, "Minions" gave family audiences another strong option now that “Inside Out” is on the downslope of its run.
But "Minions" also came with another tag that may prove more durable than modern Hollywood tends to believe: the PG rating.
The PG rating has fallen on hard times in recent years. A study a few years ago showed that studios in the current era make about double the number of PG-13 movies as they do PG. And those that are made don't tend to rake in as much money as their more strictly rated counterparts.
A glance at the year-end box office top five shows just one PG movie last year. In 2013 there were two. In 2012 and 2011 and there were zero. In fact you have to go 13 years back to find the last time the majority of the year-end top five was comprised of PG- (or G-) rated movies.
This year could continue that trend, as prototypically PG-13 movies like “Jurassic World” and “Avengers: Age of Ultron” — you know, violence, but not so much that we won’t let in unaccompanied teenagers — continue to dominate. Studios make a simple calculation: An old-fashioned PG movie isn’t going to bring in older teenagers, a key constituency in today's moviegoing climate. And filmmakers of darker material like “The Hunger Games” and latter-day “Harry Potter” films want to make sure they can get some violence in too. So the PG becomes as forgotten as One-Eyed Willie's treasure.
At the same time, studios fear the dreaded R, which is perceived as an automatic ceiling on a summer or holiday action-adventure. So the PG-13 -- initially conceived as a rather narrow strip of middle ground between the soft- and the hard-core -- is now the go-to territory.
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