2025’s biggest movies are family-friendly PG flicks and R-rated horrors

As we step further into the holiday season, the all-too-familiar argument of which movie to watch with miscellaneous relatives — young, old, sometimes conflicting — will once again rear its head.

This festive period, it’s likely that the kids will get their way, given that PG movies constitute many of 2025’s biggest hits; though it’s not as probable that they’ll be allowed to stay up while the rest of the family settles in for one of several box office-topping horror films from this year.

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We’re in the midst of a golden era for family-friendly flicks, as detailed in a Wall Street Journal piece last week. Indeed, the incredible success of PG-rated films like “Lilo & Stitch” and “A Minecraft Movie” in recent months could be matched, or even bested, by new “Wicked” and “Zootopia” installments.

However, just as animated youngsters have dragged their parents to sing-alongs and spin-offs on the big screen, the overwhelmingly R-rated horror genre has been another frighteningly bright spot in an otherwise inconsistent year for movies.

Though PG-rated movies, per data from The Numbers, have seen their share of domestic box office ticket sales drop to 31.7%, at the time of writing, since overtaking PG-13s last year, R-rated movies have captured a 34.5% share to date in 2025.

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The box office was once dominated by PG-13s — a genre “just edgy enough to appeal to movie-loving youngsters but nowhere near grizzly enough to give them sleepless nights,” as we noted last December.

This year, however, with G-rated films effectively becoming extinct, titles that cater to the two more extreme ends of the demographic spectrum are clearly matching the pull of PG-13s. Still, despite their mainstream appeal, R-rated horror and PG-rated movies don’t often attract any real Best Picture Oscar buzz — though that could change this awards season with fan favorite “Sinners.”