This day in WND History: July 22

Family movies best, Hollywood realizes

July 22, 2006: Statistics compiled by the Christian Film & Television Commission confirmed what Ted Baehr, publisher of the Movieguide website and MOVIEGUIDE magazine, had been telling moviemakers for years: “Movies with a strong Christian content year after year do better at the box office.”

Over the years those movies have turned in average income of about $160 million, he said. Movies with less significant levels of moral leadership have averaged $60 million, and those at the opposite end of the scale from Christian values have averaged $12 million.

“We’ve hammered away at that for the last 14 years with our economic analysis of the box office,” he said.

And proving once again that money talks, the trend in Hollywood is toward family-oriented films – up from 6 percent in 1985 to 45 percent in 2002. And in 1985, 81 percent of the movies were rated R, but fewer than 45 percent of the movies released since 2001 have been R.

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