Study Finds R-Ratings Are Costly

Movie studios are making a costly blunder producing R-rated films with a strong teen appeal, according to an industry research report released Wednesday.

Movies such as DreamWorks SKG’s “The Mexican,” starring Julia Roberts and Brad Pitt, and Jennifer Lopez’s “Angel Eyes,” a Franchise Pictures release distributed by Warner Bros., could have earned as much as 40% more money in the first weekend if the films had been rated PG-13, the report concludes.

“The R-rating has a major impact on your box-office earnings,” said Joseph Helfgot, president of MarketCast, which conducted the eight-month study. “Production companies and studios have to take a closer look at which direction to go.”

Bad movies are the real problem, said several studio marketing executives who downplayed the significance of the study.

“R-rated movies that appeal to 12-to-16-year-olds obviously are losing out of some revenue,” said one studio marketing executive who noted that these films are often disappointments. “But the R-rated movies that are made for adults and appeal to adults are doing very well.”

MarketCast, which tracks movie box-office performance for studios and production companies, issued the three-page report under the headline: “The R-Rating Works.”

MarketCast analysts gauged interest in films during weekly random telephone samplings in the nation’s top 200 markets before a movie was released, then compared those figures with actual box-office results. Only people who went to at least one movie during the last two months were surveyed.

Out of 37 R-rated movies that earned more than $5 million during their opening weekends, at least 15 would have attracted one-third more viewers with PG-13 ratings, MarketCast found.

The researchers also discovered a change occurred at the box office during three months last fall. “Scary Movie,” released July 7, made $42.3 million its opening weekend. But by October--a month after an FTC report rocked the industry by illustrating that studios marketed R-rated movies to teenagers--several R-rated movies tanked.

The report singled out “Tomcats” and “Freddy Got Fingered.” The report’s authors calculated that “Blair Witch II” could have raked in as much as $20 million during its first weekend, but its R-rating kept the first-week earnings at $13 million.

Sure enough, the crowd most interested in seeing “Tomcats,” by Revolution Studios, turned out to be younger than studio executives had planned. And in Canada, where younger children are allowed to watch the American equivalent of an R-rated movie, “Tomcats” was a hit.

The report landed with a thud in Hollywood, where studio executives dismissed its methodology.

One studio executive, who asked not to be named, pointed to “Saving Silverman” as a good example of a bad movie that couldn’t be saved by a PG-13 rating. An R-rated “Silverman” was cut to win a PG-13 rating and still made only $7.4 million in its opening weekend. The Sony Pictures movie went on to earn a modest $19.4 million in U.S. theaters.

“Bad movies will still make a little more money,” said Vincent Bruzzese, chief tracking analyst at MarketCast.

Teenage girls seem to honor the ratings more than boys. For example, teenage girls were the most enthusiastic about “Angel Eyes,” with more than one-third polled saying they were “definitely interested” in seeing the movie.

“However, the R-rating kept them out, and instead of a strong $14-million opening, it netted little more than $9 million,” the report said.

“The Mexican” could have drawn $8 million more in the opening weekend, the study found; it had an opening weekend of $20 million.

“You are always going to lose some audience with an R-rated film,” said Terry Press, head of marketing at DreamWorks. “We did not sell ‘The Mexican’ to teenagers, and I have no evidence that throngs of teenagers showed up at the theaters and were turned away.”