Is an 'R' Rating Really a Kiss of Death?

In this day and age, it's no secret whatsoever that Hollywood studios has reservations about making R rated movies. When given the choice, most of the time they'll want to edit and cut an R rated movie to drop it down to PG-13. The reason behind this is quite simple: Money! But is this behavior justified?

Hollywood studios tend to believe that PG-13 movies (or lower rated) will make more money than R rated movies. The logic behind this is simply that PG-13 and lower have a wider audience. Sounds logical to me. After all, the higher you go up in the rating system, the more people become ineligible to go to the theaters to see the movie. Thus, it stands to reason that PG-13 movies have the potential to make more money than R rated movies due to having more people eligible to watch the movie. A look at the all-time box office charts only seems to prove this.

If you take a look at the top grossing films (domestic) of all-time, you'll find that only 8 R rated movies make it into the top 100:
Passion of the Christ
The Matrix Revolutions
Hangover
Hangover II
Beverly Hills Cop
The Exorcist
Saving Private Ryan
300

If you account for inflation, it becomes 10:
The Exorcist
The Godfather
Beverly Hills Cop
Blazing Saddles
Animal House
Passion of the Christ
Rocky Horror Picture Show
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest
House of Wax
Terminator 2

So, according to these numbers it would appear that R rated movies indeed don't perform as well, thereby verifying the "paranoia" of Hollywood studios. However, this can be a bit misleading.

You see, this doesn't take into account certain things. One being the fact that a majority of these top grossing movies are films that made tons of money on re-releases. This holds especially true for Disney films which definitely clutter the top grossing lists. Another factor not taken into account: the number of R rated movies in the market. It stands to reason that, considering Hollywood's reservations against releasing R rated movies, such films would be scarce on the charts. Therefore, this means fewer R rated movies out there that get the chance of making that top grossing list.

To examine this point, we simply have to look back at the releases over the years. For this, we'll simply look at mainstream releases (those released in 2,000+ theaters).

Looking at 2011, we can find that just 30 out of 110 mainstream releases so far have been R rated. That's a mere 27%. Looking back at 2010, we find that 40 out of 122 mainstream releases were R rated. A slightly higher 32%. If we add those two up we see that only 30% of the mainstream releases over the past two years have actually been R rated. If we restrict that to major releases in 3000+ theaters, that number drops dramatically to more like 10-15%.

So, already we can see that clearly there's a bias against R rated movies and they are definitely a minority in the major release market. However, given the smaller test pool here, it might be argued that it's unfair to compare that 32% to the previously mentioned 10% for all-time gross. So, we take a gander at that same test pool in terms of how much they grossed.

Using 2010 and 2011, the numbers don't give us much more of a difference. In 2010, 32 or the top 100 grossing movies were rated R. In 2011, so far, 27 of the top 100 have been rated R. That averages out to be 29.5%. As we see, the numbers are starting to match up much more closely now. Given the MPAA getting stricter over the years, plus such movies like Disney re-release catalogs clogging up the top grossing all-time lists, it's easy to see how past numbers could get diluted even more the further we go back.

So, we're left with roughly 30% of the top grossing movies from the past two years being rated R. On top of that, we see that roughly 30% of mainstream releases actually are rated R. So, it stands to reason that R rated movies are actually performing just as well as PG or PG-13 movies. It's just there aren't enough out there to be given a real chance in those top charts. It's like, if I have a bag of 100 marbles where 70 are red and 30 are blue. If I draw 10 of them, statistics tell me that 7 will be red and 3 will be blue. This is pretty simple mathematics and statistics. However, it seems Hollywood would like to dismiss the uneven ratio of red to blue marbles and simply infer that since 7 were red, then obviously the red ones are somehow easier to pull from the bag. This is the same logic that they apply to movies.

In the end, of course there are going to be fewer R rated movies topping domestic gross lists when there are far fewer R rated movies actually being made. Despite the flawed logic of viewing these top grossing films, R rated movies actually seem to perform just as well as PG-13 movies. Furthermore, it's not entirely uncommon for fans to pass over movies and criticize them for being PG-13 when they felt they should have been rated R. So, it's not entirely illogical to think such movies as Live Free and Die Hard, Ghost Rider, Terminator Salvation, etc could have been better and fared better at box offices had they decided not to water them down to PG-13 movies.

Now, I'm not saying all movies should be rated R. However, there are definitely cases where the movie would be better that way. Some past cases have even shown that having to edit down to a PG-13 rating just makes the film feel watered down and incomplete.

So, what do you think? Would Hollwood be better off if they stopped thinking of an R rating as being so taboo? Clearly it seems the idea that PG-13 movies perform better than R rated movies seems to be a myth.