This is a list of most of the top 10 highest grossing films of all time.
So what do all these films have in common?
For one thing, they're almost all franchises that have many sequels.
They're all rated PG 13.
Nearly only about half of the money they all raked in
collectively was brought in through box office sales.
The other half is made in a much more unexpected way that
wasn't really directly related to the target audience of the film.
To make any kind of franchise,
especially the cinematic kind that's funny many sequels,
you have to make a lot of money off of your film.
[inaudible] this financial return and judging how will audiences like movies,
usually comes in the form of tracking box office sales.
But the actual money made off of each ticket is split in more ways than you might think.
Well, this is a perfectly adequate system.
It isn't the most ideal way to capitalize off
the film's profits because it's just being split between so many different entities.
That's why it's so important that Star Wars did something that
changed the way the film industry operated forever.
Up until this point,
Toys were not part of distribution.
They were based off of movie properties,
but only as an afterthought when these movies
repeatedly performed well at the box office.
But Star Wars flick this idea on its head.
It didn't wait for the film to be released to act on a desire for Toys.
George Lucas believed so firmly that
Star Wars characters and props can make great toys that he passed up a
$500,000 directorial salary in
order to retain licensing and merchandising rights for the franchise.
With that belief, he and his team reached out to toy manufacturers
six months in advance of the film to make toys based off of concept art.
This was previously unheard off.
Many big toy manufacturers like Hasbro and Mattel
completely passed up this opportunity because what they
and so many other people didn't expect was just how well
Star Wars would over perform where before toys were made to supplement films,
Star Wars completely change the tide.
This one film had the power to raise all industry toy sales up eight percent in 1978.
It was the first movie time with the Lego brand and it's
one of the few film franchises which has been able to
generate a lot of money even in between
the huge gaps of time between some Star Wars films.
Today, these films have a similar impact to the revolutionary 1977 counterparts.
The Force Awakens is still the number one highest grossing film of all time in
the US and The Last Jedi is not far behind at number eight on that list.
While that proves that ticket sales are strong with this franchise,
toy sales are even stronger.
Episodes one to seven collectively took home $4 billion in Box Office revenue,
but the toy lines associated with them generated a
whopping $12 billion in the same timeframe.
There is one big difference between the Star Wars films of the 70s, 80s, and today.
Since 2005, every Star Wars film released in theaters has garnered a PG 13 rating.
Before, they were just PG.
It's also worth noting, however,
that the PG 13 rating wasn't even invented until 1984.
That's six years after the first Star Wars movie and almost 50 years after Batman,
Superman and a lot of other superheroes became pop culture phenomenon for kids.
Before this, there was only PG and R ratings.
PG 13 was created as a middle ground between the two for
movies that might contain more violence and expected of a PG movie,
but not as much as an R rated film because apparently,
seeing a man's still beating heart get ripped out of
his chest was deemed a smidge too violent for children,
but not so much that it should be restricted to adults above the age of 18.
So thank you Indiana Jones.
But the thing is, a lot of film franchises that are
big Blockbusters today were grandfathered
in as kid friendly content because they
proceeded the PG 13 rating in terms of their intellectual property.
But the thematic nature of a lot of these films
contain a lot of punching, slicing, biting,
and violence which means that,
films that were originally released as PG are now
being bumped up to PG 13 in their sequels.
Well, this trend seems to push kids to engage in
material that's deemed to be above their age range,
but also pushes movies to engage in practices that meet kids at their own level.
This is exemplified by the fact that for every new superhero sequel that comes out,
your main character is bound to get
a new costume and a new toy associated with that costume.
This isn't really a trend for R rated movies
as dead fools costumes stays the same from one movie to the next.
Logan never suits up in any kind of recognizable garb.
It's important to note that because of these practices,
it's easy to see family friendly PG 13 movies
as devious marketing tactics trying to get kids in to sell toys.
While it's clear that this is a driving factor,
it's also important to note that a lot of the money made on toys goes back to
the studios and filmmakers so that they can keep
producing movies that are loved not just by kids,
but by people of all ages.
At the end of the day, the NPAA isn't the government regulated organization.
The ratings that they put in place are suggestions not laws.
If history is any indicator,
these ratings are updated when there's a heavy amount of outcry
from parents based on content in certain films.
Seeing as 88 percent of parents surveyed by
the NPAA feel that their ratings are accurate,
it doesn't seem like the trend of using
PG 13 movies to sell toys is going to stop anytime soon.
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