Kid-friendly films are the backbone of the box office these days

Six months on from when “Inside Out 2” was breaking all the records and being hailed as the savior of the 2024 box office, it seems that showing family-friendly films is still the surest way to pack a movie theater out, as “Wicked” and “Moana 2” help PG-rated movies soar to their best box-office performance in almost 30 years.

So far this year, PG-rated movies have accounted for just over a third of domestic box-office ticket sales, according to data from The Numbers. That’s the highest share of the market they’ve occupied since 1995 (as far back as the box-office analysis site’s figures go).

“PG,” as a Comscore senior analyst told Axios recently, “is the new PG-13.” It’s also, essentially, the new “G” — a rating that has mostly gone extinct at the US box office, as moviemakers aim to pull off the oh-so-lucrative combo of appealing to both kids and adults, a feat that generally requires a little more daring than what’s allowed in “G.” That audience, the preschool generation, is now increasingly catered for at home via streaming services.

The plot sweet spot

When the Motion Picture Association introduced the PG-13 rating some 40 years ago — thanks, weirdly, to Indiana Jones and the Gremlins — it created a box-office behemoth, with studios rushing to make flicks that were just edgy enough to appeal to movie-loving youngsters but nowhere near grizzly enough to give them sleepless nights. That’s proved a pretty dependable formula for seat filling, with the same data from The Numbers showing that movies with the PG-13 label have outearned every other rating in every nonpandemic year in North America this century. 2024 could finally end that streak.

If “Moana 2”’s record-shattering start runs on, it’ll be tighter than ever, and, as history can attest, PG moviegoers are just like the rest of us: they love a good follow-up. Indeed, of the top 15 highest-grossing PG-rated films of all time, 10 are later installments in a series or remakes.