G is for Grosses

Hollywood, the world capital of sex and violence, has discovered its next big thing: family. The industry made its biggest profits last year from G- and PG-rated movies, and plans to fill the nation’s screens in the next few years with even more princesses, monsters, talking animals, bright schoolkids and scrappy ballplayers.

It’s not hard to see why. This year’s biggest surprise, 20th Century Fox’s “Ice Age,” a computer-animated story of prehistoric animal bonding, has grossed more than $140 million in just four weeks of release. Other successful family films, such as Disney’s G-rated “The Rookie,” released last month, and its earlier hit “Snow Dogs,” are pushing the box office to a record start this year.

This follows blockbuster family films in 2001, when three of the top four highest-grossing films (“Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone,” “Shrek” and “Monsters, Inc.”) were rated G or PG. The live-action low-profile feature “The Princess Diaries” surprised its makers at Disney with more than $100 million at the box office, while Miramax’s “Spy Kids” was a breakout hit that inspired a sequel (and a flock of imitators).

Feeding the burgeoning family film market through 2002 are such films as “The Other Side of Heaven” (Excel Entertainment), “Hey, Arnold” (Nickelodeon), “Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron” (DreamWorks), “Curious George” (Universal), Disney’s “Lilo & Stitch,” “Country Bears,” “Treasure Planet” and “Tuck Everlasting,” Fox’s “Like Mike” and the sequels “Spy Kids 2: The Island of Lost Dreams” (Miramax) and “Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets” (Warner Bros.)

If studios needed any further convincing about the potential of the family film market, “Ice Age” should erase any doubts. The computer-animated film wasn’t released by either of the animation powerhouses--Disney or DreamWorks--and came out at a historically slow time of the year at the box office. Its opening weekend gross of $49 million was a shock to many in the business, including Fox.

“Releasing a family film in March is not common,” said John Fithian, president of the National Assn. of Theatre Owners. “And it not just worked but it blew the socks off a record.”

Bob Harper, vice chairman of 20th Century Fox noted that a decade ago, family movies were either for kids or the mothers who decided what the kids would watch, he said. The target audiences had time to discover the films since they ran for about a month.

“We are now in an era when practically every weekend is an event weekend,” and event movies need to be accessible to everyone, Harper said. Over time, the success of movies like “Toy Story” and “Shrek” demonstrated that movies about children, even animated ones, could appeal to fathers and teenagers as well as mothers and small children. Industry executives and observers attribute the interest in family-oriented fare to a combination of factors: The growing sophistication and popularity of computer animation, the federal government’s increased scrutiny of marketing adult fare to under-age audiences, a more conservative national mood after Columbine and Sept. 11, and a new generation of parent filmmakers.

“We’ve become absorbed with family values,” said Glenn Ross, president of Artisan’s Family Home Entertainment, which last month expanded its video operations to start distributing family films in theaters. Producers are no different from other American parents, he said. “If you produce a family film, you can say, ‘Look what Daddy made.’” The division will release its first film, the animated “Jonah--A Veggie Tales Movie,” in the fall.

UC Irvine economics professor Arthur De Vany and UCI colleague W. David Walls will publish in July a study in the quarterly academic publication Journal of Business that shows G-rated films are less risky and have greater success rates than R-rated films even in theatrical runs. “The paradox is that people think Hollywood makes R-rated movies out of concern for the bottom line,” De Vany said. In fact, he said, the truth is just the opposite: Hollywood could have increased its profits by producing more G-rated movies.

That message slowly seems to be getting through to Hollywood. “Studios have already decided that they’re going to make more G, PG and PG-13 films,” said a market researcher for the major studios who didn’t want to be named. Often criticized in conservative political and cultural quarters for ignoring family values, studios are now vying for hard-to-find quality material with gentle themes and universal appeal.

Even Miramax, a studio built on grown-up dramas, announced recently that it is forging into the family market with a series of films based on popular children’s books such as “Ella Enchanted.” The company calls them “The Teddy Projects.”

The studio was impressed with the success of “Spy Kids,” written and directed by Robert Rodriguez (“El Mariachi”), which grossed $113 million for its sister label, Dimension Films. “We’re looking at developing more of these types of films, no question,” said Bob Osher, co-president of production at Miramax. “We will be bringing the Miramax sensibility to some family films.”

In 2003, Miramax is scheduled to make a film from the best-selling book series about a young criminal mastermind, “Artemis Fowl.” New Line Cinema and Scholastic Entertainment have acquired rights to the award-winning trilogy “His Dark Materials,” about a parallel universe where humans share souls with animals.

By their very nature, family-friendly films can attract larger audiences than more adult fare. That’s one reason some filmmakers are willing to edit their R-rated films to get a PG-13, said Jack Valenti, president of the Motion Picture Assn. of America, the organization responsible for rating films. “And most would rather get a PG than PG-13,” he said. “Your audience potential is larger, no question about it.”

Producer Barry Mendel (“The Royal Tennenbaums,” “The Sixth Sense”) notes that it’s not just in theaters that family films do well. In the aftermarket of videos and DVDs, a G-rated film will sell up to five times as many units as an R-rated film, Mendel said, as parents search for suitable films for their children to watch at home.

The increased interest in family films has delighted the nation’s theater owners, who have been calling for a higher percentage of family-friendly films for several years. “My theater-owner members cry out every year for more family-friendly films. They’re the ones selling pictures,” said the National Assn. of Theatre Owners’ Fithian.

Only 13% of films are rated G or PG, but they have made up 20% or more of the box office gross for the past several years, he said.

Fithian suggests one reason filmmakers are reluctant to make more family films is that they lack prestige. “It’s just not cool to make family films,” he said. A G rating, though appealing to parents wanting to take young children safely to the movies, can also drive away many in the teen and adult audience who assume it means the movie will be too bland or soft. “You hear a lot of talk that ratings affect who comes into the theater,” said Wes Craven, director of “Scream.” “You might make a very interesting film and a G rating would keep adults and young adults away.”

If there has been a G-rated stigma, it too is changing. During the past few years, respected directors known for their hard-edged films have turned to family fare. David Lynch, David Mamet and Craven directed “The Straight Story” (rated G), “The Winslow Boy” (rated G) and “Music of the Heart” (rated PG), respectively. “Spy Kids” director Rodriguez made his name with the bloody “El Mariachi” and its sequel.

Since Nickelodeon acquired rights this year to “A Series of Unfortunate Events,” author Lemony Snicket’s 13-book series about the adventures of three orphans, the project has attracted several A-list directors, said Julia Pistor, senior vice president of Nickelodeon Movies.

Some executives resist the notion that people choose a movie based on its rating, arguing instead that audiences simply respond to good storytelling. “People want to see good movies,” said Dick Cook, chairman of Walt Disney Studios. He noted that Disney did not aim to make “The Rookie” a G-rated film, he said. “We knew it was a great story and one that we wanted to tell.”

The popularity of family films “goes through cycles,” Cook said. “Sometimes the films don’t have universal appeal and other times they just seem to be hitting on all cylinders. We’re going through that period now.”

Edwin Catmull, president of Pixar Animation Studios, noted that when family film turn into blockbuster hits, “people have a hard time believing it. They had to have something edgy and push some bounds to prove something for some reason.”

“When ‘Toy Story’ came out [in 1995], it was very successful,” he said. “It was a surprise. Nobody knew who we were. People were hungry for these kinds of films.”

Perhaps the real reason filmmakers have not made more family films is that they are notoriously hard to do well. “How do you do a movie that is simple enough for a child yet sophisticated enough for an adult to feel engaged by? In trying to serve two such different masters, you end up with a lot of bad scripts,” producer Mendel said. “When somebody does a film like ‘Babe’ or ‘Toy Story,’ people in the industry bow down to that.”

UCI’s De Vany said that while studios often talk about market demographics and penetration, “they have no clue. You can’t predict these things.”

In the Journal of Business study, De Vany and Walls studied more than 2,000 films from 1984 to 1994 and found G-rated movies dominated other ratings categories in box office and video revenues. A separate analysis of films dating from 1994 to 2000 produced identical results.

“It’s an industry where learning is difficult,” De Vany said. Once a certain type of movie succeeds, other filmmakers tend to jump on the bandwagon. When a few fail, they jump off.

Trying to copy a successful movie, though common, is a strategy that’s bound to fail, some executives said. “When Disney did well in the late ‘80s with ‘Beauty and the Beast,’ ‘The Little Mermaid’ and ‘Aladdin,’ then all the other studios jumped in,” Catmull said. “That splurge of things did more damage than good. Most of those projects failed. They were not about telling stories, they were about copying and making money.

“The next thing that happened was the effects revolution. ‘Jurassic Park’ came out using digital effects. Suddenly everyone felt like they had to have major effects. A raiding war went on for a few years until it collapsed,” he said.

Catmull said Pixar films aim for an audience of children and adults by mixing animation that appeals to children and verbal play for adults. “The reality is children live in an adult world. They hear things all the time that are fairly sophisticated. If you play down to children, they might find it amusing the first time. The second time, they’re done. We make films adults can enjoy and children can watch but reach for, find meaning and see multiple times.”

But he said the primary key to success is finding a creative team that works well together to produce something original.

Despite the recent interest in family films by the studios, Hollywood is unlikely to reduce its production of adult dramas, Artisan’s Ross said. “They’re just making a more balanced plate, with a portion of a little of each.”

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Here are the top 10 movies of all time at the box office (as of last Sunday), measured by their domestic gross in millions of dollars. Of the top 100, 22 are rated R, but you have to go all the way down to No. 25, 1984’s “Beverly Hills Cop,” to find the first of only four R-rated movies among the top 50.

*--* Title Year Rating Gross 1 “Titanic” 1997 PG-13 $600.8 2 “Star Wars” ’77 PG $461.0 3 “Star Wars: Episode 1 The ’99 PG $431.1 Phantom Menace” 4 “E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial” ’82 PG $430.5 5 “Jurassic Park” ’93 PG-13 $357.1 6 “Forrest Gump” ’94 PG-13 $329.7 7 “Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s ’01 PG $316.8 Stone” 8 “The Lion King” ’94 G $312.9 9 “Return of the Jedi” ’83 PG $309.2 10 “Independence Day” ’96 PG-13 $306.2 Source: ACNielsen EDI

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Lynn Smith is a Times staff writer.