Did kids movies save Hollywood?
Business Daily
BBC
4.4 • 796 Ratings
🗓️ 22 July 2025
⏱️ 18 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Films for children and young adults are giving a major boost to cinemas. The recent A Minecraft Movie smashed records, making $301 million globally in its opening weekend - the biggest ever for a video game adaptation.
In 2024, Inside Out 2 led the global box office earning $1.69 billion, followed by Despicable Me 4 and Kung Fu Panda.
Now, film studios are following these trends; fast-tracking sequels, producing more animations, and adapting popular video games into stories geared towards family audiences.
We speak to film producers, box office analysts and cinema operators about the strategies behind this shift and its impact on the industry.
If you'd like to contact the show, send an email to [email protected]
Presenter: Megan Lawton Producer: Sam Gruet
(Picture: General view of a roadside billboard along the Sunset Strip promoting A Minecraft Movie, in April 2025, in West Hollywood, California, US. Credit: Getty Images)
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hello and welcome to Business Daily with me, Megan Lawton. |
| 0:04.1 | Today, grab your popcorn and get comfy. |
| 0:08.8 | We're off to watch a kids' film at the cinema. |
| 0:11.5 | It already is one of the pillars of the theatrical movie business. |
| 0:15.8 | Family-friendly and young adult films are riding to the rescue of the Hollywood box office, |
| 0:21.3 | from the classic cartoon to something a little different. |
| 0:25.7 | Chicken jocky. |
| 0:28.0 | Yeah, well, the studios go with what works. |
| 0:31.7 | So sit back, relax and enjoy as we go behind the scenes of one of the world's most famous industries. |
| 0:38.7 | Oh man, I've got to be careful with that one because we are working on some of those that haven't been announced yet. |
| 0:44.1 | To find out how kids' movies saved Hollywood. |
| 0:47.5 | That's coming up on Business Daily. |
| 0:51.2 | Where else would we start but here at the cinema? |
| 0:56.0 | Here to meet me is Ken Mont, who looks after 25 venues in Canada's British Columbia for major cinema chain Cineplex. |
| 1:04.6 | Walking through the lobby, there's the familiar smell of popcorn. |
| 1:08.5 | This place has nine screens and looking through the movie listings up ahead of me, |
| 1:13.1 | plenty of them are for children and young adults, with two names dominating the box office right now, |
| 1:19.1 | a Minecraft movie and Lilo and Stitch. In his office, a room full of movie memorabilia and |
| 1:26.1 | posters. He tells me about the year in movies so |
| 1:29.1 | far. Big hits, of course, have been Minecraft, which just came out at the beginning of April, |
| 1:33.2 | which we expected to be big, but it was a lot bigger than we had anticipated. And it just kept |
| 1:39.4 | building. And I think it was the week leading up to the film, We were expecting it to do well. And every day, |
... |
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