The Hollywood Reporter:

The Movieguide report rates movies using more than two dozen criteria, such as whether a title promotes capitalism or socialism or if it promotes or denigrates biblical principles. Violence, sex, political correctness, revisionist history, environmentalism, feminism, homosexuality and more hot-button political issues all are taken into consideration.

This year’s report concludes that seven of the top 10 films of 2011 scored high on Movieguide’s index and therefore qualify as films with “strong or very strong Christian, biblical, moral and redemptive content.”

Movieguide identified 91 movies in 2011 that scored high in “conservative/moral categories”; these earned an average of $59 million apiece. On the other hand, it identified 105 movies that scored high in “liberal/leftist categories”; each of those titles earned an average of just $11 million.

The average movie scoring four stars from Movieguide earned $53.5 million while the ones that scored just one star earned $10.6 million.

Exceptions abound, of course, notable ones being The Hangover Part II and The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn Part 1, hit movies that earned $581 million and $702 million worldwide, respectively, but are panned by Movieguide as films that promote “fringe worldviews” and “obscene behavior.”

For example, for nearly 30 years, when Hollywood was run according to the Motion Picture Code of Decency, enforced by the Roman Catholic Church and the Protestant Film Office, the movie industry saw an unprecedented economic boom. That fiscal prosperity only began to wane when Christian churches pulled away from Hollywood in the 1960s and movies reached increasingly new levels of immorality featuring more and more graphic sex, violence, and obscene language.

Toward the end of this Golden Age of Hollywood, the movie industry was selling 9.43 tickets per person in the United States and Canada, but now sells only about 4.1 tickets per person.

Also, nearly two decades of research by Movieguide, a non-profit family guide to movies and entertainment supported by Christian donors and general subscriptions, shows that family friendly movies with no graphic sex, violence, and obscene language earn more than two to six times as much money at the box office, on average, as movies with such graphic content.

That’s exactly what Movieguide tells Hollywood’s top executives each year in Movieguide’s Annual Report to the Entertainment Industry (which is also highlighted at the Annual Movieguide Faith & Values Awards Gala held each February and attended by many of those executives).

Ironically, a study released by the Parents Television Council in 2008 revealed that the amount of foul language on primetime network TV has skyrocketed since 1998. Meanwhile, a study of foul language in G, PG, and PG-13 movies revolving around teenagers by three Brigham Young University professors shows that the 1980s movies they studied averaged 35 obscenities or profanities per movie, but decreased to 25 per movie in the 1990s and 16 per movie in the current decade, in the wake of Movieguide®’s annual study, which began in 1991.

This is no surprise to Movieguide®, which reported a 2006 poll by The Los Angeles Times and Bloomberg that most teenagers are offended by depictions of foul language and sex in movies and television.

Teenagers are the most frequent moviegoers, according to annual statistics from the Motion Picture Association of America.

Their preference for movies with little or no foul language is reflected in annual statistics from Movieguide’s Annual Report to the Entertainment Industry.

According to those statistics, in the last five years, movies with no foul language averaged nearly $51.48 million at the box office, but movies with 26 or more obscenities or profanities averaged less than $24.20 million.

That’s more than twice as much money!

Is it any wonder, then, that the movie industry, despite the decline in movie attendance in the past 40 years since the end of the movie production code of decency, still seems to be economically sound, while the major television networks have noticed a significant decrease in viewers in the last 10 to 15 years?

Clearly, the depiction of foul language and obscenity in movies and television does not usually sell. Neither do graphic depictions of sex, nudity, and extreme violence.

In fact, clean family movies and clean action thrillers remain the most financially successful types of movies, not only at the North American box office, but also internationally and on DVD and Blu-Ray.

The movie studios and their stockholders seem to be listening to this well-established fact. When will the major television networks in the United States?

A new three-year study of the Top 25 movies released in 2006-2008 earning the most money overseas shows that international moviegoers prefer clean movies with strong or very strong Christian, moral and/or redemptive content and values.

This study is significant because it matches our annual study of the Top 25 Movies at the Box Office in America and Canada and the top home video sales annually, and because Hollywood now makes more money overseas than it does in the United States.

The Movieguide® study found that 20 of the Top 25 movies overseas in 2006-2008, or 80%, contained strong or very strong Christian, moral, redemptive, and even biblical content, earning $8.39 billion out of $10.59 billion total, or 79.2% of the money among the Top 25.

That’s an average of $419.5 million per movie!

A couple of the best examples are “Spider-Man 3″ and “Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull,” both of which actually made it into the Top 10 movies overseas in 2006-2008.

“Spider-Man 3″ has a very strong Christian worldview with very strong redemptive themes, where the hero goes in repentance to the foot of the Cross to shed his sins. The new “Indiana Jones” movie shows the hero rejecting the evil tyranny and mind control of Communism and ends with a brief church wedding scene that quotes the words of Jesus Christ in Matthew 19 and Verse 24 of Chapter Two of the Book of Genesis in the Old Testament!

None of the Top 25 movies overseas in 2006 to 2008 were R-rated, but nine of them were rated G or PG. Also, only three of the Top 25 had more than 25 obscenities and profanities, only three had any depicted sexual content, only two had any sexual nudity in them, only four had any very strong action violence, only five (20%) had any drug references, and only 10, or 40%, had any scenes of drunkenness or alcohol abuse.

Moviegoers clearly prefer clean movies with strong Christian, moral, biblical, and redemptive content. They want good to triumph over evil and justice to prevail. They want to be inspired.

The following chart lists the kind and percent of moral, theological and political content Movieguide® found in these Top 25 Movies:

Top 25 Movies at the Overseas Box Office, 2006-2008 

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Besides “Spider-Man 3″ and the “Indiana Jones” movie, the study also included such top movie releases in 2006, 2007 and 2008 as “The Dark Knight,” “I Am Legend” (which had a several Christian worldview), “Wall-E” (which had a very strong redemptive Christian worldview focusing on a heroic example of the Christian definition of love), “Ice Age: The Meltdown,” “Prince Caspian” (based on a Christian novel), “Iron Man,” “Transformers,” and the last two “Pirates of the Caribbean” movies (both of which contained overt Christian references at the center of an ultimately redemptive plot).

A Movieguide® study of the Top 25 movies overseas in 2005, 2006 and 2007 showed very similar results to the new three-year study.

Movieguide®’s analysis of the top movies released in 2008 also showed that moviegoers rejected movies with extreme forms of substance abuse. Movieguide® also measured miscellaneous amounts of immorality, such as lying, stealing, blackmail, extortion, greed, envy, jealousy. Movies with no miscellaneous immorality made nearly six times more money than movies with extensive or extreme amounts of miscellaneous immorality.

We have found similar results in practically all of our previous studies.

Movieguide® has been analyzing the content of movies and comparing box office numbers since 1991. The annual studies since 1996 have been particularly comprehensive.

Movies with no foul language compared to average box office in 2008: 

• No obscenities/profanities averaged: $55,568,733
• 0-25 obscenities/profanities: $32,145,527
• More than 25: $22,934,908

Movies with no sexual content compared to average box office in 2008:

• No sexual content averaged: $42,953,235
• Implied adultery, promiscuity, sexual perversion or sexual immorality: $33,290,253
• Depicted adultery, promiscuity, sexual perversion, or sexual immorality: $19,390,655
• Graphic adultery, promiscuity, sexual perversion, or sexual immorality: $14,878,503

Movies with no nudity compared to average box office in 2008 movies: 

• No nudity: $36,274,503
• Some sexual nudity: $29,132,665
• Extensive sexual nudity: $19,874,327

Movies with no alcohol abuse compared to average box office in 2008 movies:

• Some drunkenness: $32,809,224
• Extreme abuse: $14,014,314

Movies with no drug references compared to average box office in 2008 movies:

• No drug references: $48,819,627
• Some drug references: $18,880,203
• Very strong drug references: $11,621,557

For more information, visit www.movieguide.org or call 1-800-577-6684.

What Sean Penn and other Communist sympathizers in Hollywood refuse to recognize (at least publicly) is that American moviegoers usually reject movies that unabashedly promote a Communist or socialist viewpoint.

For seven years, MOVIEGUIDE® has been looking at the political content of the Top 250 English-language movies that open nationally each year in the United States. An examination of the domestic box office averages for movies promoting an unabashedly socialist or Communist viewpoint shows that such movies averaged only about $15.5 million and $7 million per movie from 2002 through 2008.

And, that includes the pro-Communist, socialist diatribes of Michael Moore, whose success at self-promotion leaves all other lefty filmmakers in the dust!

In fact, this year, MOVIEGUIDE® calculates that movies released in 2008 coming from a more liberal or leftist sensibility (including Steven Soderbergh’s movie honoring Che Guevara, “Mamma Mia!” and Bill Maher’s “Religulous”) averaged only $11.4 million at the box office, but that movies with more conservative content, including the new Indiana Jones movie where the villain is a spy from the Soviet Union, “Prince Caspian” and the Christian movie “Fireproof,” which attacked the porn industry, averaged $81.2 million.

American moviegoers reject the radical left and its policies. Only when the left is able to successfully hide its agenda from the American people is it able to fool America’s citizens.

Commie rats will sink the entertainment industry if Hollywood continues to listen to them and applaud their propaganda.

Note: Dr. Ted Baehr is Publisher of MOVIEGUIDE® and www.movieguide.org, which the New York Times noted is the most conservative, traditional movie review website. Dr. Tom Snyder, Editor of MOVIEGUIDE®, contributed to this article.