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Research papers
Movies with smoking make less money
  1. Stanton A Glantz1,
  2. Jonathan R Polansky2
  1. 1Center for Tobacco Control Research and Education, University of California, San Francisco, California, USA
  2. 2Onbeyond LLC, Fairfax, California, USA
  1. Correspondence to Professor Stanton A Glantz, Professor of Medicine, University of California, San Francisco, CA 94143-1390, USA; glantz{at}medicine.ucsf.edu

Abstract

Objective To determine the relationship between presence of smoking in films and total box office receipts.

Methods Regression analysis of box office receipts as a function of film rating, production budget, year of release and presence of smoking for 1232 films released in the USA between 2002 and 2010.

Results R-rated films made, on average, 87% (95% CI 83% to 90%) of what PG-13 films of similar smoking status made and smoking films made 87% (95% CI 79% to 96%) of what comparably rated smoke-free films made. Larger budget films made more money. There was no significant effect of release year or G/PG rating compared with PG-13-rated movies.

Conclusions Because PG-13 films without smoking (median $48.6 million) already make 41% more money at the box office than R-rated movies with smoking (median $34.4 million), implementing an R rating for smoking to remove it from youth-rated films will not conflict with the economic self-interest of producer-distributors.

  • Advocacy
  • environmental tobacco smoke
  • economics
  • environment
  • advertising and promotion
  • tobacco industry
  • qualitative study
  • marginalised populations
  • industry public relations/media
  • industry documents

https://doi.org/10.1136/tobaccocontrol-2011-050023

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    Movies with smoking recruit large numbers of adolescents and, to a lesser extent, young adults to become smokers.1 ,2 They also stimulate smoking behaviour in smokers.3 ,4 Tobacco industry documents show that the film and tobacco industries collaborated commercially for decades.5 ,6 In 1998, the Master Settlement Agreement between large USA domestic tobacco manufacturers and state attorneys general prohibited paid tobacco product placement.7 While the incidence of smoking in movies has been falling,8–12 as of 2010, 44.9% of films still included smoking, including 43.4% of PG-13 films (table 1). One hypothesis to explain the persistence of high levels of smoking in US films is that smoking pays off at the box office.

    View this table:
    Table 1

    Box office receipts and budgets for films, by rating and tobacco presence, 2002–2010

    Methods

    To test this hypothesis, we compared the reported box office gross receipts (in 2010 dollars) of the 1316 films, with and without tobacco imagery, that ranked among the top 10 in ticket sales in any given week of their ‘domestic’ (USA and Canada) theatrical release between 2002 and 2010. (We used total gross earnings during first-run theatrical distribution in the analysis. The figures do not include DVD sales or rental income because these data are not publicly available.) Tobacco presence in these films was monitored by Thumbs Up! Thumbs Down!, a programme of Breathe California of Sacramento-Emigrant Trails (http://scenesmoking.org/). Box office grosses were from the film industry website http://www.IMDbPro.com/ (table 1). To capture the effects of star power,13 ,14 marketing clout15 and wide appeal,16 the analysis used production budget estimates (‘negative costs’, divided between the so-called above-the-line expense of rights acquisition and fees for the producers, director, writers, composer and credited cast, and the so-called total shooting period cost of crew, sets, equipment, transportation, editing and effects but not marketing and distribution). These budget estimates were available for 1234 of these films at http://www.IMDbPro.com/ and http://BoxOfficeMojo.com/ and unpublished for 82 films. Dollar amounts were adjusted to 2010 dollars using the US Consumer Price Index.

    The results were analysed with a multiple regression model accounting for year of release, Motion Picture Association of America rating, budget and presence of smoking. Preliminary analysis indicated that log transforming the box office receipts produced normally distributed residuals, so the analysis is based on the modelln(G)=b0+bY(Y−2010)+bKK+bRR+bB[ln(B)−ln(B)¯]+bSS where G = gross box office receipts, Y = year of release, K=1 if the film was rated G or PG (rated for young children), R=1 if the film was rated R (under 17 not admitted without a parent), B = budget, S=1 if it included smoking, an 0 otherwise. Thus, the reference condition is a PG-13 (teen)-rated smokefree film with a median budget (because ln(B) is centred) released in 2010. (Centering ln(B) only affects the estimate of the constant, b0; it has no effect on the other coefficients in the regression.) Because the equation is log transformed, exp(bi) is the relative change associated with factor i. For example, exp(bS) is the relative change in box office for films with smoking compared with similarly rated films without smoking released the same year.

    Two films were dropped from the sample—Kites, a 2010 film that grossed $1.6 million with a budget of $15.0 million (2010 dollars) because it was not rated, and Paranormal Activity, a 2009 R-rated film that grossed $110.1 million with a budget of $11 000 because it was a severe outlier—leaving a total sample size of 1232 films.

    Results

    The regression model provided a statistically significant overall description of the data. Residuals were normally distributed and well behaved. R-rated films made, on average, 87% (95% CI 83% to 90%) of what PG-13 films of similar smoking status made, and smoking films made 87% (95% CI 79% to 96%) of what comparably rated smoke-free films made. Larger budget movies made significantly more money than lower budget films. There was no significant effect of release year or G/PG rating compared with PG-13-rated movies (table 2). The fact that all the variance inflation factors (VIF) were close to 1.0 means that these effects were independent of each other. There was no interaction between rating and smoking status of the films (results not shown).

    View this table:
    Table 2

    Results of regression analysis for ln(Gross) ($millions, 2010)

    Discussion

    Comparison of theatrical box office for smoking and smoke-free movies shows that, with comparable budgets, smoke-free films generate several million dollars more in box office sales than similarly rated films with smoking.

    Motion picture researchers repeatedly find production costs significant in predicting film success,17–22 with high-return stars hired as insurance,23 and costly ad campaigns announcing the stars' presence and the spectacular experience awaiting movie goers.18 Identification of other predictors, aside from Motion Picture Association of America rating, has been less certain. Positive and negative critical reviews have not been found to harm wide-release films past their first week or capable of elevating a small film into a successful wide-release performer.24 As with timing a film's release,25 studios have the means to manipulate the critical factor.23 The only film genre regularly seen as predicting sub-par returns is drama.17 ,18 ,26 This study did not code all the films for genre, but in an analysis of the 25 top-grossing films from 2002 to 2010, each of the four most popular motion picture genres (action, adventure, comedy and drama) tracked by Nash Information Services (http://www.thenumbers.com/) showed no significant differences (p=0.148 by χ2) in the proportion of movies with smoking among the four genres.

    Health authorities are proposing an R rating for future films with smoking to reduce adolescent exposure to smoking by eliminating it from movies designed to be marketed to youth, which would substantially reduce youth exposure to onscreen smoking.27 The basis for this proposal is that movies are viewed by studio-distributors as a commodity, with the rating negotiated with the film's production company prior to production. This study shows why movie studios tend to push for a PG-13 rating: such movies make 18% more at the box office compared ones with an R rating. Because PG-13 films without smoking (median $48.6 million) already make 41% more money at the box office than R-rated movies with smoking (median $34.4 million), implementing an R rating for smoking to remove it from youth-rated films will not conflict with the economic self-interest of producer-distributors.

    What this paper adds

    • Many health authorities are calling for policies that would remove smoking from almost all youth-rated films by integrating the presence of smoking into film rating systems (to provide an adult content rating—R in the USA—for smoking).

    • Data from films that were in the top 10 grossing films for at least 1 week in the USA between 2002 and 2010 show that non-smoking films make about 13% more than smoking films with the same rating.

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    Footnotes

    • Funding This work was supported by the Legacy Foundation. The funding agency played no role in the selection of the research question, the conduct of the research or preparation of the manuscript. SAG is American Legacy Foundation Distinguished Professor in Tobacco Control.

    • Competing interests None.

    • Provenance and peer review Not commissioned; externally peer reviewed.