“In an analysis of American box-office receipts for 250 movies released last year, the Christian Film & Television Commission (CFTVC) found that films that stressed “strong moral content” made an average $92,546,413 — six times the revenue of those that focused on “immoral, negative content.”
Those movies brought in an average $14,626,234.
On a broader scope, the study also found that from 2000 to 2003, movies with “no nudity” brought in an average $137.8 million across the nation.
Films that depicted “full male and/or female nudity” in those same years brought in an average of $43 million, however.”
OK, that is from a very conservative Christian group. And I can’t find the data either. Still, if you think about it, neither Spiderman nor Frodo nor Harry Potter ever has sex on screen. So I doubt if the numbers are made up.
What are we to make of this? Michael Medved has argued for years that Hollywood has a left-wing, secular, 1960s bias, and could make more money with wholesomeness. Perhaps the moguls simply can’t comprehend how such movies could be popular, just as they turned away Mel Gibson and made him finance Passion with his own money.
While some bias may be present, enough moviemakers are simply greedy. The study shows that many wholesome movies are in fact made and succeed financially. So if more wholesome movies would make more money, we would get them. They are not shut out of the market. So in financial terms I doubt if the bias can be a large one.
The more interesting economic question is why wholesome movies (read: children’s movies, which I take to include young teenagers) hold a more concentrated market position. That is, they make a high average amount of money yet their success cannot be replicated easily by competitors. My best guess? Children want to see the same movie that their peers are seeing, which implies a concentration of returns. Yet their parents will only take them to the cinema so many times, which limits the number of movies in that market. Furthermore, these movies, which rely on focality, face especially high marketing costs.
The bottom line: Hollywood may indeed be a corrupt Babylon, but there is no easy way out of the box. There is only room for so many wholesome pictures in the market. Beyond this point, consumers demand sex and violence in their movies.
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