“Nasty” box office: Hollywood needs family-friendly films

Everyone’s wondering if “Glicked,” the potentially record-breaking, industry-boosting pre-Thanksgiving combination of “Wicked” and “Gladiator II,” will be this year’s “Barbenheimer,” the record-breaking, industry-boosting summer combination of “Barbie” and “Oppenheimer.” .

Could be. Hope so. But it’s hard not to think everyone is missing the point.

Because the future of Hollywood doesn’t depend on who sees both films on the same day. It depends on who will see “Wicked” in the same series. We share Twizzlers and a tub of popcorn.

families.

Double-feature combos are definitely a novel and entertaining way to captivate audiences and boost the box office, and I would never discount the Oscar-winning “Oppenheimer,” which is amazing with audiences given its serious biopic genre arrived well. For its part, “Gladiator II” definitely looks like a gas.

But it was “Barbie” and now “Wicked” that made a whole lot of noise: Universal Pictures’ musical adaptation grossed $114 million at the domestic box office this weekend, topping the US $55.5 million -Dollars-expensive film adaptation of Swords and Swords from Paramount -Sandals epic. And it will be “Moana 2” that will continue to do so over Thanksgiving weekend if it hits its projected $125 million opening. Not the R-rated, demographic-targeted projects, but the big, festive films that the whole family can enjoy.

“Something the whole family can enjoy” used to be a selling point. Now, in an age of targeted demographics where Hollywood has decided that an R rating is all but required for a film to be considered “important,” that’s become a joke. Calling something not made by Pixar/Disney “family friendly” immediately makes it uncool and definitely unsexy. Even though they like to tout the elusive “four quadrant” productions, most studios these days don’t make an effort to make family-friendly films. At least not the ones that exist outside of the MCU.

And yet, like “Barbie” and this summer’s big hit, “Inside Out 2,” “Wicked” played to enormous audiences across all demographics, not to mention generations, and no doubt a lot of families, too. (Who, if early reports are any indication, were willing to sing along to many of the songs, to the dismay of those who weren’t.)

If Hollywood really wants to make a comeback, it needs to take this lesson to heart: If you want to sell a lot of tickets and popcorn, families are the ultimate consumer group. For good reason.

Streaming may have taken over the world, but trust me when I say that parents of all ages want to take their kids to the movies. When your kids are little, it offers a rare opportunity to do something they enjoy while you can sit down for two hours without arguments or constant demands. Bliss! If you like the film, even better.

When your children are teenagers or young adults, movies are becoming increasingly rare as an opportunity to share an experience in which everyone is fully engaged – unlike home movie nights, dinners out, or virtually any group activity, the use of cell phones in movie theaters is different forbidden. Even though complaints about bad behavior in movie theaters are on the rise, it’s still more likely here than anywhere else that you’ll be able to experience the joy of going to the movies without feeling compelled to ask after noticing your child’s lit phone and bowed head : “Are you even?” Are you looking at this?” They do, because that’s the only thing they can do. And then, at least for the drive home, you’ll all have something to talk about without having to explain how people used to navigate entire cities without the benefit of an app, or having them show you what they mean when they say something on TikTok play .

Once again you have a common language, even if only temporarily. Great!

And more than any other patron, families—and by that I mean any group that includes at least two generations, the older of whom pays—view the moviegoing experience as an outing, which means snacks are a given.

Once you’ve made the effort to find the free time for everyone to fight for seats, buy tickets, and get everyone to the theater on time, a parent (or grandparent, aunt, or older brother) won’t draw the line at it , to get this one a hot dog and this one a slushy. No, this is now officially a mini-holiday, so pretzel bites and Skittles all around. (And with “Wicked,” buyers can take solace in how much cheaper even the most concession-heavy film is compared to watching the stage version.)

In an industry struggling to maintain its brick-and-mortar business model in a digital world, why are there so few films the whole family can enjoy?

Once upon a time, there were four-quadrant films in virtually every genre. Oh, for the golden years of the Harry Potter series, which overlapped with The Lord of the Rings for the first three years. I’ll long remember the wonders of 2005, which included family-friendly hits like “Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire,” “The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe,” “Batman Begins” and “Mr. & Mrs. Smith”, “Madagascar”, “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory”, “The Corpse Bride”, “King Kong”, “Nanny McPhee”, “Robots”, “Sky High”, “Zathura: A Space Adventure”, “Devious!” “Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit”, “The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants” and of course the timeless classic “The Adventures of Sharkboy and Lavagirl in 3-D”.

Our family practically lived at the movies this year.

This is not an argument against sex, violence, adult themes, or whatever constitutes the R rating for a particular film. That same year we got Brokeback Mountain, Memoirs of a Geisha, The Constant Gardener, Cinderella Man, A History of Violence, The 40 Year-Old Virgin, Wedding Crashers, “Pride and Prejudice” and many other good, sophisticated adult films.

But with the notable exception of superhero movies, Hollywood seems increasingly willing to throw the baby, or at least the eight-year-old, out with the bathwater.

While it’s wise to combine and cross-promote films as diverse as “Barbie” and “Oppenheimer” or “Wicked” and “Gladiator II,” we shouldn’t lose sight of which films attract larger audiences. To paraphrase another film that attracted multiple generations to the cinema: If you build it, they will come. Especially if you can bring the children with you.