MPAA gives new Coen Bros. film Hail Cesar! a "smoking" label then rates it for kids (PG-13)

The MPAA just announced that Hail, Caesar! — the new Coen Bros. film opening nationally on Friday 5 February 2016 — has been rated “PG-13 for some suggestive content and smoking."
 
The film is distributed by Universal Pictures (Comcast).
 
The MPAA began adding “smoking” descriptors – small-print labels – to its ratings of a small fraction of wide-release movies with tobacco imagery in 2007. Through 2014, 88 percent of top-grossing, youth-rated films with smoking carried no “smoking” label, including three-quarters of PG-13 films with more then fifty tobacco incidents.
 
In 2015, a UCSF-Breathe California analysis of the MPAA’s descriptors concluded: 
 
The device of labeling one out-of eight youth-rated films with smoking may lead the public to believe mistakenly that it can rely on MPAA’s ratings to inform parents about the presence of and risk from smoking on screen. In contrast, the 2014 Surgeon General report stated that an R rating for smoking would reduce youth smoking by 18 percent. Reference
 
The Coen Bros. have made eight top-grossing films since 2003, and also had screenwriting credits on Unbroken (2014) and Bridge of Spies (2015). Here’s a breakout:

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Note 1: Tobacco impressions = a film’s tobacco incidents X paid admissions to the film in the domestic (Canada & US) market. In-theater impressions do not include the large number of additional audience impressions delivered by the film through video and on-demand channels. 
 
Note 2: Public subsidies (“production incentives”) are tax credits or spending rebates offered by countries, states and provinces to film producers. These became more common after 2004. Estimates are made by multiplying the film’s published production budget by a net subsidy rate, reflecting the exclusion of most above-the-line expenses (such as project development costs and producer fees) under subsidy program rules. 
 
Tobacco content data courtesy of Thumbs Up! Thumbs Down!, a project of Breathe California of Sacramento-Emigrant Trails.
 
Jonathan Polansky prepared this post.