Family and faith friendly entertainment was celebrated on Friday night during the 26th Annual Movieguide Faith and Family Awards Gala in Los Angeles. In addition to the awards, Dr. Ted Baehr, the founder of Movieguide, shared highlights from the 2018 Movieguide Report to the entertainment industry.
“Despite a couple disturbing trends, 2017 was another big year for family movies and movies with faith and values,” Baehr said.
The report details the fact that entertainment with strong family values and patriotic themes that are free of gratuitous sex and violence are not only better for the culture, they’re better for the entertainment industry’s bottom line. Of the top 10 movies worldwide in 2017, a full 90 percent of them contained “strong or very strong Christian, redemptive, biblical, moral content.”
According to the report, family friendly movies make significantly more money than those containing a great deal of sex and violence.
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Domestic Box Office Average for 2017 from the report:
| Very Strong Content | B.O. Avg. |
| Very Strong Christian/Redemptive/Moral Content | $57.84 million |
| Very Strong Non-Christian Content | $10.49 million |
| Very Strong Secular Humanist or Atheist Content | $1.16 million |
These numbers confirm a similar trend over the last 10 years, which show that more family friendly films do better at the box office than movies saturated with immorality.
Politics plays a role at the box office as well. The report also shows that movies with conservative content do better than films with a leftist message.
| Content | Count | Total 2017 B.O. | 2017 Avg. B.O. |
| All Conservative/Moral Categories | 96 | $6,122,331,191 | $63,774,283 |
| All Liberal/Leftist/Immoral Categories | 86 | $2,186,818,162 | $25,428,118 |
The message to the entertainment industry seems clear enough. There is more money to be made by making family friendly entertainment.
The winner of the Ware Foundation Prize for the Best Movie for Families was The Boss Baby (Dreamworks/20th Century Fox). The animated film featured the voices of Alec Baldwin, Miles Bakshi, Steve Buscemi, Jimmy Kimmel, Lisa Kudrow, and Tobey Maguire. Movieguide’s review of the film called it a “heartwarming movie with a strong Christian, moral worldview that’s pro-life, pro-family and pro-business.” The movie was directed by Tom McGrath and produced by Ramsey Ann Naito.
Darkest Hour (Focus Features/Comcast), a British war film, starring Gary Oldman as Winston Churchill, took home the prize for Best Movie for Mature Audiences. The picture chronicles the events leading up to Churchill’s famous “We shall fight on the beaches” speech. The film, which was directed by Joe Wright, was described by Movieguide as “a suspense filled historical drama.”
The Epiphany Prize for Most Inspiring Movie went to The Star (Sony Pictures Animation), which featured the voice talents of Steven Yuen, Gina Rodriguez, Keegan-Michael Key, Kelly Clarkson, Patricia Heaton, Kristen Chenowith, Tracy Morgan, Tyler Perry, and Oprah Winfrey. The animated film tells the tale of Boaz the Donkey, who belongs to Mary and Joseph, around the time of the birth of Jesus. Movieguide’s review called it “a wonderful, hilarious, deeply reverential animated family movie centered on the birth of Jesus.”
The Ephiphany Prize for Most Inspiring TV Program went to the National Geographic Channel’s miniseries The Long Road Home for the episode entitled “Black Sunday, Part 2” (National Geographic Channel). The miniseries follows American forces in Sadr, Iraq, in 2004 who are ambushed byIslamic extremists. It is a powerful and intense war epic with a large cast and realistic depictions of the horrors of war. Movieguide’s review said of the first two episodes, “[They] have a very strong Christian, moral, patriotic worldview.”
Other category winners are as follows:
Faith and Freedom Award for Movies: The Promise (Survival Pictures, Phoenix Pictures, Open Road Films). The film starred Oscar Isaac, Charlotte Le Bon and Christian Bale and was directed by Terry George.
Faith and Freedom Award for TV: The Long Road Home: Black Sunday, Part 2.
Christie Peters Award for Most Inspiring Performance in Movies: John Corbett for his performance in All Saints (Sony Affirm/Sony Pictures Ent.)
Christie Peters Award for Most Inspiring Performance in TV: Paul Sparks for his performance in The Crown: Vergangenheit (Left Bank Pictures and Sony Pictures Television for Netflix.)
Kairos Prize for Most Spiritually Uplifting Screenplay by a First-Time or Beginning Screenwriters: William Gebby for Northstar.
Kairos Prize for Most Spiritually Uplifting Screenplay by an Experienced Filmmaker: Alexandra Boylan for Switched.
