Family Movies with Christian Values Sell
| By: Dr. Tom Snyder; ©2001 |
| Despite all the hype, MOVIEGUIDE ® says that statistics show “family friendly” movies actually do better at the box office than those with offensive language, sexual content, or anti-biblical world view. |
Family Movies with Christian Virtues Sell
Hollywood is releasing more movies with positive Christian content than ever before, according to MOVIEGUIDE®’s annual study of movies released in theaters.
Surprisingly, family-friendly movies with positive Christian content continue to earn more money on average than movies with excessive violence, foul language, explicit sex, graphic nudity, and other content that offends the majority of Americans in the United States.
“Good guys finish first,” said Dr. Ted Baehr, Chairman of the Christian Film & Television Commission, whose annual Report to the Entertainment Industry was published just before the 9th Annual MOVIEGUIDE® Awards Gala at the Skirball Cultural Center in Los Angeles.
According to Dr. Baehr’s annual MOVIEGUIDE® report, the number of movies with positive Christian content totaled 118 in 2000, 24 percent more than 1999, 100 percent more than 1997, when only 59 movies contained positive Christian content.
Each year, the Christian Film and Television Commission and its magazine, MOVIEGUIDE®, charts all of the content in the theatrical movie releases in the United States. It then classifies that content based on traditional Christian standards of morality, philosophy, history, and theology, and examines how well each category performed at the box office.
Year in, year out, movies with Christian content earn more money on average at the box office than movies with non-Christian content or anti-Christian content. Thus, movies with a positive acceptability rating from MOVIEGUIDE® in 2000 earned $38.6 million on average, but movies with a negative rating from MOVIEGUIDE® averaged only $21 million.
Also, movies in 2000 which contained a strong Christian worldview earned $42.9 million on average, which was nine times more than movies with a strong secular humanist worldview, 19 times more than movies with a strong anti-Christian or anti-Semitic worldview, 24 times more than movies with a strong romantic worldview, and hundreds of times more than movies with a strong Communist worldview.
Furthermore, more than two-thirds of the Top 25 Box Office Movies in 2000, or 68 percent, had at least some Christian or redemptive content in them, while 90 percent of the top ten home video sales and rentals in 2000, including Toy Story II, Tarzan and Stuart Little, had at least some moral, Christian or redemptive elements playing a major role in the premise of the movie.
Some people contend that movies with sex and nudity always sell, but that’s not what MOVIEGUIDE® has discovered over many years.
For example, MOVIEGUIDE®’s box office statistics for 2000 show that movies with no sex earned on average $33.8 million, but movies with some implied sex earned $25.2 million on average, while movies with depicted sex earned $12.5 million on average, and movies with extreme sex average $15.1 million.
Also, movies with no nudity earned $26.6 million on average, but movies with some sexual nudity averaged only $14.9 million and movies with extreme or graphic sexual nudity averaged $14.5 million.
What is the reason for all this good news, asked Dr. Baehr?
Polls by Gallup and other organizations show that about 170 million Americans attend church in a typical weekend, Dr. Baehr noted. Ninety-five percent of Americans believe in God, he added. Also, 61 percent of Americans believe that miracles come from the power of God, and 84 percent believe that Jesus Christ is God or the Son of God.
“It pays to make family movies extolling redemptive Christian beliefs and virtues,” Dr. Baehr asserted. “That’s what the average moviegoer really wants to see.”
