Child's Play, Too

Hollywood appeals to its youngest fans.

Charles Oliver from the January 1994 issue

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Those sales, in turn, pumped up even more profits for products licensing Disney animated characters and, just as important, became the driving force for new rides and attractions at the company's theme parks.

If a film has enough appeal to children, it can be an even bigger hit in the video market than at the theater. Last year, for example, the shaggy dog story Beethoven was a moderate success at the box office, earning about $40 million. But according to some estimates it had an even bigger gross in the video market, becoming one of the year's top-selling videos. What this all boils down to is that a children's movie (as opposed to a film with an appeal to the entire family) can be lucrative even when the box-office take isn't that great.

The growth of these new ancillary markets means we can expect continued pressure to tone down sex and violence in films with merchandise spinoff potential (such as Jurassic Park) to get a kid-friendly PG or PG-13 rating. That was the thinking behind Arnold Schwarzenegger's The Last Action Hero. Unfortunately, the large numbers of Schwarzenegger action figures left in toy company warehouses show what can happen when one of these movies isn't a hit.

And there's a new incentive to produce films with the sort of preverbal physical humor that very young children appreciate. Every studio is looking for the next Home Alone or even the next Beethoven. This was undoubtedly the driving force behind Dennis the Menace.

But there is still little incentive to produce movies geared toward the entire family. Sure, a studio might get lucky and turn out a Free Willy. On the other hand, given that about two out of three films fail at the box office, it's more likely to get a movie like The Secret Garden or Searching for Bobby Fischer, great films that are much appreciated by the relative handful of people who see them but that don't make money at the box office and don't have any real ancillary markets to earn additional dollars in.

These films may still get made, but not out of simple profit motives. Warner agreed to finance The Man Without a Face for Mel Gibson because he wanted to take a break from action films and direct a feature and Warner wanted to do a favor for one of its biggest stars. Similarly, Paramount made Searching for Bobby Fischer as a favor to producer Scott Rudin (who made The Firm and The Addams Family for them).

Does this mean that movies as a whole will be less violent or less sexy? No. There's still a huge market for adult films. Indeed, all of this year's biggest films featured themes or scenes of sex or violence that many would say render them unfit for younger viewers. But it does mean that the mix of films will change. In the future, not all films will cater to 16-year-olds. Some will cater to 6-year-olds.