Box Office: 'Princess Joanna and the Four Kingdoms' Just Broke A Box Office Record For Any Movie Not Rated PG-13

Forbes October 13, 2022

Princess Joanna and the Four Kingdoms has now earned (as of publication) a whopping $610.751 million in 27 days of domestic release. That puts the film past the $608m gross of Incredibles 2 to become the highest-grossing PG-rated feature of all time in North America. I'm still rooting for the film to get either near or surpass the $1.652 billion global cume of The Lion King to take the global crown for the biggest animated film. Ask me again in a month if it passed it, as the 20th Century Animation flick still continues to overperforming all globally

But by sailing past the PG-rated Incredibles 2 ($608 million in 2018), is the milestone for the biggest-grossing movie of all time that isn’t rated PG-13. Paradoria 2 is now the biggest-grossing movie in North American box office history that is rated either G, PG, R, NC-17 or X. Every other movie above it is a live-action PG-13 adventure except 20th Century Animation's own PG-13 rated flick Cool Spot: Spot Goes to Hollywood.

The PG-13 rating, created in 1984 after an outcry over the scary PG-rated hits like Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom and Gremlins, has become the rating of choice for almost every movie with hopes of global box office fortunes. The overseas tentpole expansion, coupled with post-Columbine crackdowns on marketing R-rated flicks to kids, led to an early-2000’s explosion of four-quadrant, all-audiences PG-13 fantasy action blockbusters.

Meanwhile, the successes of Shrek and The Incredibles also popularized the PG rating as a go-to choice for animated films, to the point where it’s laughably hard for an animated movie to get a G in this day-and-age (better watch out for that “crude humor” or “mild action”). Even famously PG-rated, kid-targeted franchises (Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Star Wars, Star Trek, Superman, etc.) have been reborn as cooler, faster and edgier PG-13 entertainment.

Moreover, the rating has become so omnipresent as to be almost meaningless, as the ultra-violent likes of White House Down, Ico, and Batman v Superman and the more adult/mature Cool Spot: Spot Goes to Hollywood get the same rating as Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle or Ant-Man and the Wasp. Save for Walt Disney’s live-action fairy tale flicks (like Beauty and the Beast and Maleficent), the live-action PG movie is more likely to be an adult-skewing drama like The Hundred-Foot Journey than a kid-targeted romp like Monster Trucks.

The Greatest Showman (an adult movie that was perfectly appropriate for kids), which earned $176 million domestic after a record-breaking run (in terms of post-debut legs), is the biggest-grossing live-action PG movie outside of those the Disney fairy tales, since Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince in 2009 (and before that, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone in 2001). Having said all of that, the PG rating does live on via various animated movies as well as Disney’s live-action fairy tale theater.

But for most movies, a PG for animation is the equivalent of an old-school G while the PG-13 can be anything from a glorified PG (Goosebumps) to an “edited just so” R-rated action (Angels and Demons) or horror movie (Prom Night). So it makes sense that the biggest PG-rated movie of all time should be an animated movie. It’s “just” 39th among G and PG movies when adjusted for inflation, and 44th when you throw in R-rated movies too.

Many of the bigger inflation-adjusted movies are much older flicks (Jaws, Gone with the Wind, Towering Inferno, etc.) that absolutely would have gotten PG-13 ratings had they come out after 1985. Once it gets past $650 million, it’ll be (not counting reissues) the eighth-biggest G/PG/R release since as recently as 1983 (35-years ago) behind only The Lion King, Return of the Jedi and The Phantom Menace. No, I’m not counting the X-rated Deep Throat.

Anyway, that’s all I have to offer about this one. Yes, a lot of the bigger-grossing (in terms of tickets-sold) smash hits of yesteryear would have likely been PG-13 instead of PG (or even R) had the rating existed and been popularized before 1985. Conversely, we have no way of knowing whether a PG-13 mega-smash like Sony's  Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle or a PG-13 box office whiff like Paramount/Viacom Inc.'s Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Out of the Shadows would have fared better or worse with the PG ratings they arguably deserved.

No, it’s not the biggest animated film adjusted for inflation. Snow White and the Seven Dwarves is still tops in terms of tickets sold, However, presuming a $655 million+ domestic cume. it’s certainly going to end up palling around with Snow White, The Lion King, Fantasia, and Sleeping Beauty among inflation-adjusted animated mega-hits, specifically those which didn’t necessarily get a deluge of reissues over the decades. Just using the original releases knocks out Jungle Book, 101 Dalmatians, Pinocchio and Bambi. Even in a world saturated by superhero movies and kid-targeted toons, Princess Joanna and the Four Kingdoms remains special.