Published: October 30, 2025
By Gavin Boyle
This fall has seen multiple adult-oriented movies fail at the box office, highlighting the fact that they cannot pull an audience, despite Hollywood continuing to believe they are the pride and joy of the industry.
“The 40- to 60-plus-aged crowd used to attend movies on a frequent basis. They wouldn’t just go to critically acclaimed movies but programmable ones like WOMAN IN GOLD ($33M) and HELLO MY NAME IS DORRIS ($17.7 M),” a studio executive told Deadline. “That demographic has been lost to the convenience of Netflix, and the arthouse exhibition track for these movies which included the Landmark and Arclight Cinemas isn’t in the same shape it was pre-pandemic. The cinemas that made these movies pop on opening weekend are gone, and with it the audience.”
Related: 2022’s Biggest Box Office Flops Prove Audiences Want Movies With Strong Moral Messages
In the past few months alone, movies like SPRINGSTEEN: DELIVER ME FROM NOWHERE, AFTER THE HUNT, A BIG BOLD BEAUTIFUL JOURNEY, CAUGHT STEALING, SMASHING MACHINE, and KISS OF THE SPIDER WOMAN have grossly underperformed in theaters, with few having prospects to turn a profit despite featuring A-list celebrities and enjoying nationwide distribution.
While many in the industry would argue movies like these are the heart and soul of the industry, the reality is that audiences are not willing to waste their money – and time – on excessive stories. Looking at the box office, it is clear what audiences truly want: family friendly movies that parents can enjoy alongside their kids. So far, only one of the top ten grossing movies at this year’s box office was rated R, and this trend continues down the list.
This has been the case for many years, as family-friendly movies have long dominated theaters. Last year, Movieguide® found in its annual Report to the Entertainment Industry that movies with very strong Christian and Biblical values grossed over $80 million at the box office, while movies that were extremely anti-Christian only garnered $13 million.
“The findings of our 2025 Report to the Entertainment Industry show once again that movies with strong Christian, redemptive, biblical, and moral content and values did much better at the box office in 2024 than movies with excessive or graphic foul language, sex, nudity, violence, and substance abuse, or movies that rejected or mocked positive values. These movies also did much better overseas and on home video. That’s because most moviegoers, including families with children and grandchildren, want to see inspiring stories that enrich their lives,” Movieguide® Founder and Publisher Ted Baehr wrote in this year’s report.
Movieguide® has long made the case that audiences want family-friendly content more than anything. The performance at the box office over the past few weeks is just another example of this being true. However, this is more than a recent trend, and in fact, the entire industry now relies on family-friendly movies.
Since the pandemic, the theater industry has been struggling to reach the levels it was at in 2019. 2020 was a disastrous year, and it was not until 2023 that the industry was even close to recovering. Year after year, it is family-friendly, uplifting movies that set the box office alight, allowing it to continue this recovery, rather than facing a decline.
With every excessive movie that flops in theaters, it becomes more clear that uplifting, family-friendly movies are the real heart of the entertainment industry. They are the ones that truly define culture and draw massive audiences. Hopefully the string of failures among adult movies in recent weeks will help change the focus of Hollywood studios to serve audiences the content they want, rather than the content the studios think they want. Since the pandemic, it has been proven that audiences will return to theaters when served a strong moral movie, but are no longer willing to put up with the excessive content that may have found slight success in the past.
Read Next: Box Office Once Again Shows Movieguide® Knows What People Want To See
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