New study shows that movies with smoking make less money

Jonathan Polansky and I just published a paper in the peer reviewed journal Tobacco Control that analyzed how much money 1232 moves released in the USA between 2002 and 2010 made. After controlling for when the movie was released, the film rating and production budget (a proxy for presence of stars, production values of the film and how heavily the film was promoted), we found that films with smoking grossed 13% less than comparable smokefree movies.

Because PG-13 smokefree films already made 41% more money at the box office than R-rated films with smoking (median $48.6 million vs. $34.4  million), implementing an R rating for smoking to remove it from youth-rated films will not conflict with the economic self interest of producers.

Even smokefree R rated movies made more money than smoking R movies.

Indeed, given Hollywood's obsession with making money, one wonders what the incentive is to keep the smoking in films.  Art?

Read the paper at http://tobaccocontrol.bmj.com/content/early/2011/09/23/tobaccocontrol-2011-050023.abstract  

(If you cannot access the paper, email me and I will send you a PDF.)

Learn more about the Smoke Free Movies issue at http://www.smokefreemovies.ucsf.edu