After a weak start to the year, the box office is benefitting from an unlikely savior — PG films.
As movie theater attendance, at long last, begins to rebound, at least part of the newfound success is being attributed to PG films like the Warner Bros. video game adaptation “A Minecraft Movie” ($951 million), Disney’s “Lilo & Stitch” remake ($858 million) and Universal’s live-action “How to Train Your Dragon” ($197 million in its opening weekend). Since January, PG films have earned $1.53 billion, accounting for 41% of the year-to-date revenue. It’s the highest percentage of any rating this year, according to Comscore.
That’s notable because it’s usually PG-13 films that generate the biggest bucks. Since 2000, movies rated PG-13 by the MPA have dominated the box office and often command more than 50% of the total marketshare. Almost all of the most broadly appealing franchise fare — from Marvel to Avatar to Star Wars — are rated appropriate for kids 13 and older. Those films cater to the widest swath of the public, bringing in adolescents and adults in addition to families with younger kids. It’s almost become a maxim of Hollywood that if studios and filmmakers want a blockbuster, they need a PG-13 rating.
Meanwhile, PG films have been considered more limiting in terms of box office. There was a sense they weren’t cool enough to appeal to teens, who were looking for something edgier (within reason). PG films were especially hobbled after the pandemic because parents with young kids were reluctant to return to theaters.
Something changed, however, in 2024: PG films outgrossed other ratings for the first time in decades, accounting for $3.18 billion, whereas PG-13 films grossed $2.88 billion, according to Comscore. In that year, seven of the 10 highest-grossing worldwide releases were PG: Disney’s “Inside Out 2,” “Moana 2” and “Mufasa: The Lion King,” Universal’s “Despicable Me 4,” “Wicked” and “Kung Fu Panda 4” and Paramount’s “Sonic the Hedgehog 3.” By comparison, five of the top 10 movies globally in 2023 and two in 2022 were rated PG.
“There’s a stigma that PG is just for kids, but they appeal to everyone” says senior Comscore analyst Paul Dergarabedian. “It’s like comfort food. People know they won’t be bombarded with too much violence or language. It’s wholesome. There’s no shame in going to a PG movie if it’s good.”
PG movies without built-in familiarity, however, have struggled to connect. Disney’s “Snow White” — based on an 88-year-old movie that no longer has cultural cachet — flopped in March with $205 million against a $250 million budget. Meanwhile, Paramount’s original family film “IF” floundered in 2024 with $190 million against a $110 million budget. This weekend, meanwhile, Disney and Pixar’s “Elio” faces an uphill battle because the intergalactic adventure isn’t based on existing IP and will likely need to rely on word of mouth to break out. It’s aiming for $25 million to $30 million in its opening weekend, which is underwhelming for the $150 million-budgeted film. Movie theater operators, who get to keep half of ticket sales, are winning either way; only the studio is losing out when those movies fail to recoup their budgets.
Some box office watchers believe it’s the property, not the rating, that’s fueling these PG blockbusters. The original “Lilo & Stitch” crashed into theaters in 2002, “How to Train Your Dragon” first took flight in 2010 and the “Minecraft” video game dropped in 2011. There’s a powerful sense of nostalgia at play in many of these cases. It’s not just parents and their young ones looking for out-of-the-house entertainment, but also the millennials and Zoomers who grew up with these franchises are buying tickets.
“They aren’t kiddie movies, even though they are rated PG,” says Kevin Goetz, founder and CEO of audience research firm Screen Engine/ASI. “There’s a multigenerational appeal. That’s a recipe for better box office.”
It also helps that there have been more of ’em. So far in 2025, studios have released 11 PG-rated movies nationwide, up from the seven that debuted during the same period in 2024 and the five that opened in 2023. However, that’s a decline from 2019 when 13 PG-rated films were released, according to the trade organization Cinema United. There’s “Zootopia 2,” “Wicked: For Good” and “SpongeBob: Search for SquarePants” on the horizon, but PG’s dominance might not last forever. By the year’s end, PG-13 titles could reclaim the No. 1 perch as “Jurassic World: Rebirth,” “Superman,” “Fantastic Four: The First Steps” and “Avatar: Fire and Ash” touch down in theaters.
Even if that happens and PG surrenders its box office crown, a rating that was once seen as standing for something overly safe and sanitized has finally become cool again.
Read the full article here
