The First $100 Mil NC-17 Movie Will Be In The Year ...

Will it be a vulgar comedy, a horror movie, or a sex spectacle? Or none of the above?

Elizabeth Berkley in 'Showgirls' - United Artists

What does a $100 million NC-17 movie look like? Is it a horror film? A vulgar comedy? A dramatic sexual curiosity? Last week Universal's Bruno was slapped with the dreaded NC-17 rating and as soon as I read this news, the first thing I thought was that the studio probably just earned themselves an extra couple of mil. Naturally, the film was going to get cut down to an R rating, but not before the Internet started buzzing. So when I thought about writing this piece, the answer to my question become obvious: The first $100 million NC-17 movie will likely be a risqué comedy with an established audience that a studio with cajones decides to release as is.

The MPAA doesn't seem to have a big problem with violence. Some of the most disturbing and depraved things I've ever seen were in R-rated films. How much further can the horror genre take it? I've seen eyeballs melt out of skulls by blowtorches. I've seen jaws ripped off and tongues dangling like aging meat. I've seen arms, legs and heads chopped off torsos. I've seen swords slashed through faces and skulls. I've seen a girl in one movie cut off a dude's junk and rip off the rest of it for good measure, tendons and tissue pulling like rubber bands. It's safe to say I've seen it all, or at least close to it. The horror genre would need to invent new obscene-looking body parts to mutilate at this point.

Sex is a whole other issue. Remember when Showgirls was going to be the movie that broke the NC-17 rating wide open? I started thinking about that movie and thought, What if it didn't suck? What if some director with a strong script landed A-list talent to bare all in a sexually mature, intriguing adult tale? Maybe a suspense thriller of some kind a la Basic Instinct that a major director had enough pull to stick with the dreaded rating.

See the best cinematic stripping

So a $100 million dollar NC-17 film will appear when?

NEVER.

The reason is simple. Studios are about the bottom line. And here is the bottom line: NC-17 limits the number of potential tickets. Would an established sure-fire comedy hit like Bruno sell a million or two more in curiosity tickets because of its NC-17 rating? Maybe ... but at the expense of millions upon millions more. High school kids are a gigantic market. No. They are the market and if you keep them out, you're cutting off your legs. A movie studio isn't going to let any filmmaker cut off their legs in a major film. And filmmakers have less cause to be uncompromising, especially with unrated directors' cuts on DVD waiting in the wings. It doesn't matter if the film cost $100 million to make or a hundred dollars. If the studio senses a hit, they aren't going to release it with the NC-17 scarlet letter. It's a drain.

The real problem, of course, is the MPAA. Get rid of these unqualified fools. And get rid of the NC-17 rating altogether. It's a joke. That's right. If it were up to me, there would be R-rated movies and then there would be porn. If I ever run things, lock the children away.

NC-17 : To be or not to be

by Daniel Herrera

With this weekend’s announcement that the upcoming comedy from Sasha Baron Cohen has been given an NC-17 rating, Bruno now adds itself to the list of films ‘unsuitable’ for children under 17. The film was only given the rating after its first submission to the MPAA so odds are it will be re-edited down to a respectable R rating to earn more money. Studios are notorious for not releasing films in theatres that get an NC-17 rating in order to recoup their funds.

This process began back in 1989 when the Peter Greenaway film The Cook, the Thief, His Wife, and Her Lover was the first film ever to receive the NC-17 label after the MPAA originally gave the film an X rating, but due to a large outcry over the films artistic integrity the new rating was created with approval from then president Jack Valenti.

Now, with most theatre chains out right refusing to show NC-17 films in their theatres for fear of public outcry, and the fact that they will not earn enough money, many studios now market their films with a ‘Hard R’ rating. The fake moniker has not been approved or denied by the MPAA and is just swept under the rug as its films contain scenes which under normal circumstances would be given an NC-17 rating.

Truth be told those films slapped with the NC-17 rating have historically not made that much money– as seen below– but what you got to wonder is that those films mentioned are all mainly independent films and some films of ‘lesser quality’.

Following grosses taken from box office mojo

1	2340	Showgirls	MGM	$20,350,754	1995
2	3195	Henry & June	Uni.	$11,567,449	1990
3	3687	The Cook, The Thief, His Wife and Her Lover	Mira.	$7,724,701	1990
4	4146	Bad Education	SPC	$5,211,842	2004
5	4267	Lust, Caution	Focus	$4,604,982	2007
6	4392	Tie Me Up! Tie Me Down!	Mira.	$4,087,361	1990
7	4812	The Dreamers	FoxS	$2,532,228	2004
8	5026	Crash (1996)	FL	$2,038,450	1996
9	5054	Bad Lieutenant	Aries	$2,000,022	1992
10	5226	Wide Sargasso Sea	NL	$1,614,784	1993
11	5360	A Dirty Shame	FL	$1,339,668	2004
12	5672	Whore	Trim.	$1,008,404	1991
13	5898	Young Adam	SPC	$767,373	2004
14	5989	Inside Deep Throat	Uni.	$691,880	2005
15	6056	Dice Rules	7Art	$637,327	1991
16	6106	Orgazmo	Oct.	$602,302	1998
17	6260	Bent	Gold.	$496,059	1997
18	6739	Tokyo Decadence	N.Arts	$277,845	1993
19	6995	Matador	WA	$206,952	1988
20	7001	Man Bites Dog	Roxie	$205,569	1993

From the past 17 years only 19 films were released in theatres under the NC-17 rating. Compare that to the number of films released each ear. According to the most recent data from the MPAA, 2007 saw 603 films released in the U.S theatrically.

Some films that were originally given the NC-17 rating and then changed to an R or a Hard R include:

The Godfather part III

Boys Don’t Cry

Last Tango in Paris

Requiem for a Dream ( I think we all know for what scene)

Pulp Fiction

The Wild Bunch- This 1969 film also holds the distinction for being originally an R rated film when it was shown in theatres and released on video then in 1993 when the film was gearing up for a re-release in theatres the film was then rated NC-17.

Of these few films mentioned all share on common element. They are all Oscar nominated films. Now of course the Oscars are by no means the end all as to what a great movie is, but it does certainly add questions as to whether quality films can earn respect with the NC-17 label. Either way with only 19 films released in the past 17 years there certainly is room for more films to come whether or not the films earns huge dollars at the box office.

Tracking the Piracy of 2008 Oscar-Nominated Films

The Oscar nominees were announced this morning, which means it's time to get out your scorecards to see who's winning in the eternal struggle between the MPAA vs. the Internet. (Hint: It's not the MPAA.)

I've been tracking the distribution of Oscar-nominated films every year, culminating with the release of six years of piracy data last year. I've updated those spreadsheets with this year's 26 nominees, for a total of 211 films from the last seven years.

You can view or download all the data below, including a second sheet with some interesting aggregate stats. As always, I'll keep it updated until the Oscar broadcast.

View full-size on Google Spreadsheets.

Download: Excel (with formulas) or CSV

Findings

So, how did they do? Out of 26 nominated films, an incredible 23 films are already available in DVD quality on nomination day, ripped either from the screeners or the retail DVDs. This is the highest percentage since I started tracking.

Only three films are unavailable — Rachel Getting Married wasn't leaked online in any form, while Changeling is only available as a low-quality telecine transfer and Australia as a terrible quality camcorder recording. (Update: A DVD screener of Australia was just leaked today.)

Other findings:

• Academy members received screeners for at least 20 of the 26 films.


• 25 out of 26 films leaked in some form online, if you include camcorder recordings.


• The average time from the time screeners are received by Academy members to its leak online is 6 days.

Surprisingly, it seems like this year's Oscar movies took longer to leak online than in previous years. If I had to guess, it's because far fewer camcorder copies were released for this year's nominees. This could be because of the theaters cracking down on camcorder recordings, but I suspect it's because fewer nominees were desirable targets this year for cams. (Aside from the obvious blockbusters, like Dark Knight, Kung Fu Panda, and Tropic Thunder.) The chart below shows the median number of days from a movie's US release date to its first leak online.

Last year, one of the interesting findings was how the release of Region 5 DVDs were reducing the prestige of official screener leaks. This year, only four of the nominated films were released as R5s, compared to eight from last year. The numbers are still too small to tell if this is a trend, but it seems like the popularity of the R5 may have peaked in 2007. (Are the studios releasing fewer R5s in general?)

What other trends in the data am I missing? Feel free to chime in with your conclusions or visualizations in the comments.

Methodology

As usual, I included the feature films in every category except documentary and foreign films. I used Yahoo! Movies for US release dates, always using the first available date, even if it was a limited release. Cam, telesync, R5, and screener leak dates were almost universally taken from VCD Quality. I used the first leak date, with the exception of unviewable or incomplete nuked releases. Finally, the official screener dates came from Academy member Ken Rudolph, who lists the date he receives every screener on his personal homepage. Thanks again, Ken!

For previous years, see 2004, 2005, 2007, 2008 (part 1 and part 2).

Update: The screener for Australia was released today, so I added that date to the spreadsheet, along with some missing retail DVD dates from last year's Oscars.