The Coming PG-13 Juggernaut

Judging by its apocalyptic title, “Armageddon,” the $100-million event picture coming from Disney’s Touchstone Pictures next summer, won’t be for sissies.

But how about for kiddies?

You bet, say Disney executives. The sci-fi/action movie, in which Bruce Willis tries to save Earth from an asteroid the size of Texas, will be loaded with explosive special effects to please male viewers, with a love story to cater to women and, if executives get their wish, with a key ingredient to lure young children: a PG-13 rating.

“Seven-, 8- and 9-year-olds are seeing more PG-13 films than ever before. That’s what we’re targeting,” said John Cywinski, Disney’s top film marketing executive, who says the studio will seek a PG-13 rating for “Armageddon” partly to “open the doors” to that preteen audience.

Disney is not alone. Especially in the wake of the enormous success of Columbia Pictures’ “Men in Black,” this summer’s PG-13 film whose special effects and plot line were both kid-friendly and hip enough for all ages, movie studios are courting that rating as never before, tailoring scripts to comply with Motion Picture Assn. of America guidelines.

The trick is to create a film that is smart or spectacular or even violent enough to attract adults--to push the ratings envelope, in the words of one executive--but still win a PG-13 rating.

The reason is simple: Kids go to movies in droves. And if they like what they see, they go back--again and again. Children may pay less for tickets, but increasingly they are regarded as an essential part of what turns event films into blockbusters.

Among movies in production for release next year, New Line Cinema is banking on a PG-13 rating for “Lost in Space,” based on the TV series. Sony’s TriStar Pictures is aiming for the same rating with “Godzilla,” the monster lizard picture, as is Paramount with “Deep Impact,” the sci-fi/action adventure about a comet hurtling toward the Earth.

And although executives at 20th Century Fox could not confirm that “The X-Files Movie,” due in theaters next summer, will seek a PG-13 rating, it’s a safe bet that thethought has occurred to them, given the television series’ popularity with teenagers.

In part, the studios are following demographic shifts. According to Peter Morrison, a demographer at Rand Corp., the ranks of America’s 8- to 13-year-olds are growing at twice the rate of the population at large. About 23.1 million kids are in that age group now, and it will grow to 24.5 million by 2001, a 6.2% increase.

“That’s nothing to sneeze at,” Morrison said. “It’s a market that’s expanding.”

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Studio executives are also watching past box-office performance. The bulk of movies made today are R-rated, meaning that children under 17 are prohibited unless accompanied by an adult. Of the 462 films considered by the MPAA’s rating board from Jan. 1 to Aug. 31 of this year, for example, nearly 65% were R, as compared to PG-13 (16%), PG (15%), G (3%) and NC-17 (0.4%). But the biggest hits do not have R ratings.

“When you look at the top-grossing pictures of all time, they have one thing in common,” said Tom Sherak, who heads distribution at 20th Century Fox, noting that all but one of the top 20 carried a rating lower than R (the exception is “Beverly Hills Cop,” in 16th place). “That’s the bottom-line reason why people want PG-13 rather than R.” Chris Lee, TriStar’s president of production, agreed.

“You can still do a tremendous amount of business with an R-rated picture. But it’s more difficult,” he said, calling the PG-13 rating “the Good Housekeeping seal for parents.”

By avoiding an R rating, studios gain a few concrete things. First, their advertising options are greater--R-rated films cannot be advertised during network television programs that are aimed at families. Second, executives say, PG-13 films play better in the heartland.

“Really big movies get their big grosses from the heartland of the country, not from the coasts,” said Sherak, adding that unlike the trend in such big cities as New York and Los Angeles, in the Midwest an R rating really keeps kids out. “Theater owners [in smaller markets] do watch more closely.”

Said Disney’s Cywinski: “If you hope to bring in kids and teens and you have an R rating, you’re going to run into some struggles in small-town America.”

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Moreover, a PG-13 is now believed to have an intangible benefit--a coolness factor--that helps lure kids. Although it may seem tame to older teens, executives say, to more and more young children, a PG-13 rating says “must-see.”

“Kids are so much hipper and more sophisticated than they used to be that younger kids want to see stuff that has a little edge to it,” said Amy Pascal, president of Columbia Pictures. “These kids have been weaned on Nickelodeon and the Cartoon Network. Stuff that’s more babyish doesn’t appeal to them.”

At times, this tendency to view kids as tough customers has led filmmakers to spice up their movies to avoid a G rating. Last year, “Fly Away Home” director Carroll Ballard admitted he added a four-letter word to his film to ensure a PG, and Jack Valenti, the MPAA’s president, says that what Ballard did is not unusual.

“Some people think G is the kiss of death,” Valenti lamented. “They get a little frightened that it will turn off an 8-year-old boy. So they throw a ‘damn’ or a ‘hell’ or a ‘crap’ in there so they get a PG.”

Some producers say it’s getting more difficult to convince studios to finance G-rated films. Kathleen Kennedy has produced five of the top 25 grossing films of all time--”Jurassic Park” and its sequel; “Twister”; “E.T., The Extra-Terrestrial”; and “Back to the Future”--all of them rated PG or PG-13. But even with that track record, she hit a roadblock with a recent proposal to make E.B. White’s “Trumpet of the Swan” into a live-action film.

“I couldn’t get it made,” she said, conceding that the project had a hefty price tag because she wanted the swans to talk. “The common response was, . . . ‘It will only appeal to very young children.’ Because the demographic is considered to be narrow, the studios aren’t willing to spend the money necessary to do it well.”

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With fewer G movies, PG and PG-13 films have become the de facto family films of the 1990s. And that affects films at the other end of the rating spectrum as well. As more children go to PG-13 films, studios are willing to tone down certain material just enough to make sure they have access to that young audience.

“We’ve edited scripts in order to . . . avoid the R rating,” said Mitch Goldman, marketing and distribution chief at New Line. “When a script is green-lighted, one of the issues we deal with aside from casting and budget is ultimately what we’re going to have to sell. . . . If we read stuff that is clearly going to give the picture an R, we deal with it then.”

From the start, Goldman said, New Line developed “Lost in Space” with one rating in mind. “The script and production [are] designed to enthrall an 8-year-old and an 18-year-old,” he said. “It’s imperative that we get a PG-13.”

Decision-makers at Beacon Communications, a independent production company, apparently felt the same way about its “Air Force One,” the action-thriller about terrorists who commandeer the president’s plane. The movie is graphic at times: Several people are killed execution-style and terrorists hold a gun to a little girl’s head. Still, when the MPAA bestowed an R-rating for violent content, Beacon and the film’s distributor--Columbia Pictures--appealed, taking the unusual step of sending the movie’s star, Harrison Ford, to argue for a PG-13.

The MPAA appeals board upheld the R rating.

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Valenti, the MPAA president, said that the ratings system is not designed to make decisions for parents but to help them decide for themselves. The dozen or so members of the ratings board try to put themselves in parents’ shoes, but the process is inherently subjective, Valenti said, and not entirely precise.

“I don’t think ‘Men in Black’ is going to disturb an 8- or 9-year-old,” he said, saying that in his judgment, that PG-13 rated film was appropriate for young children. “But there are some PG-13 movies that I would recommend that kids not go to see.”

Despite its terrifying premise, Disney’s “Armageddon” might well win a PG-13 rating, Valenti indicated, because fantasy violence--what he called “asteroids, volcanoes, dinosaurs--is less likely to cause copy-catting. It’s not human being killing human being. It’s out of this world.”

Not everyone is convinced, however.

“It’s about the end of the world,” New Line’s Goldman said dryly. “Doesn’t sound like family fun to me.”