Low-budget horror flick “Terrifier 3” (website screen grab above) cracks open the door wider for unrated films to play mainstream theaters, after grossing a solid $37 million in its first 11 days in cinemas.
“It is well on its way to becoming the top-grossing unrated film of all time domestically against a minuscule budget of $2 million and barely any marketing spend,” notes a Hollywood Reporter story by Pamela McClintock. Unrated means that it displays no audience classification.
“Before the pandemic,” the THR article continues, “few movie theaters would book a title that didn’t have a rating, because of strict limits on TV advertising, among other things. But times have changed, and ‘Terrifier 3’ was able to secure a berth in 2,513 cinemas.”
That’s about 6% of screens in the domestic market — the U.S. and Canada. The THR article believes the success of “Terrifier 3” makes it easier for unrated movies to crack mainstream media.
The unrated horror film sequel is distributed by Cineverse, the publicly traded video streaming and entertainment company based in Los Angeles. Given its annual revenue is just $50 million in its most recent fiscal year, the “Terrifier” series of three movies makes a big impact on the company’s financials. Cineverse, which was formerly known as Cinedigm, has a foothold in scare entertainment including digital platform Bloody Disgusting.
On film classification, it’s little understood that there are no government requirement films be audience-classified to restrict youth from seeing age-inappropriate content. The familiar cinema and DVD rating system (G, PG, PG-13, R and adult-only NC-17) is run jointly by Hollywood and movie theaters, and separately content on other media platforms have their own similar classifications.
That arrangement is industry self-regulation, which works well by keeping cumbersome government out of the content classifying process. And group management by industry means no one player is in charge and collective responsibility for smooth operations.
Hollywood’s major studios agree to submit all their theatricals to audience-suitability agency the Classification and Rating Administration (CARA), which is also supported by the trade group the National Association of Theatre Owners. However, Cineverse is not a major studio.
Anecdotally, the THR article found that theaters seemed to treat “Terrifier 3” as if it was R-rated. That means restricted to ages 17 and up, though younger patrons admitted if accompanied by a parent or adult guardian.
“Had ‘Terrifier 3’ been submitted [to CARA], it risked receiving an NC-17 rating, meaning that no one 17 or younger could buy a ticket, period,” says THR.
“Our entire campaign voice was built around Art the Clown’s voice,” says Cineverse senior vp-marketing Lauren McCarthy, referring to “Terrifier 3” villain. She was interviewed in an article posted by the Global Entertainment Academy of Arts & Sciences. One video for social media showed Art in clown costume on the street in Times Square dissing a background image of R-rated major studio bomb “Joker: Folie À Deux.”
Art the Clown “has a dark sense of humor, a silly personality, and he certainly would troll any other campaign out there, right?,” continues McCarthy. “That’s his MO so we are living and speaking in his voice. We boosted that so it became a paid campaign, which, as you know, boosts the organic. We then turned that into a CTV spot about the clown versus clown situation going on. We turned that into a podcast spot. And so then it becomes this whole 360 campaign around the idea that he’s the top clown movie in America. We did this multiple times throughout the campaign.”
On edgy films cracking cinemas, there is just a trickle of NC-17 films, and they are low grossing. Tops is 1973’s “Last Tango in Paris” from United Artists with $36 million in domestic boxoffice. Recent concert film “Renaissance: A Film by Beyoncé” was unrated, grossing a decent-for-the-genre $33 million in domestic boxoffice.
Says the CARA website: “We review more than 60,000 pieces of marketing each year, including theatrical, home video and online trailers, print ads, radio and TV spots, press kits, billboards, bus shelters, posters and other promotional materials. Our goal is to give parents the same confidence in movie advertising that they have in the movie rating system, while also allowing filmmakers to responsibly market their movies to their intended audiences.”
According to the third edition of “Marketing to Moviegoers,” the academic business book: “Most films voluntarily submit to the national ratings service, though there are sometimes disputes with the Advertising Administration about whether the creative message is consistent with a film’s classification.” The Advertising Administration is an associated review board that checks marketing materials (such as trailers, posters, TV commercials, websites, etc.) conform with a film’s audience classification.
Hard-charging talent in Hollywood occasionally beefs about ratings and marketing restrictions. But audiences appreciate getting information, and industry self-regulation keeps government out of having to pass judgement on creative expression.
Says “Marketing to Moviegoers”: “Under the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution dating back to 1791 protecting free speech, the government does not attempt to run a national film-censorship entity, although some local jurisdictions do enforce what are permissible child-protection measures. As a result, the United States has one of the world’s few non-government national film-rating systems — the Classification and Ratings Administration, which has been in place since 1968.”
With Hollywood movie supply disrupted by the Pandemic that upended film production and two crippling labor strikes last year, film supply is down, leaving theaters eager to stretch.
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Great article Robert! I continuously enjoy reading your informative articles and sharing them with my Movies class. Keep up the terrific job!