Remember back in the day of movies like "The Santa Clause", "The Shaggy Dog", and other live action movies you could bring the whole family to? Now let me ask you this, when's the last time a live action, non-animated movie came out that the whole family can watch?... anyone? Exactly! it's been forever and a half since the last time we got one. Now, why do you think that is? Well, I have a few ideas about it myself, as someone who lives, breathes and eats movies 24/7.
1.) Kids are exposed to stuff earlier and earlier as the years go on, just the other day in a Target I heard a little girl tell her mom to go F#$% herself. This little girl couldn't have been more than six or seven, when I was that age I hadn't even thought of the concept of cussing to my mom. I didn't even start swearing until I was thirteen or so, but that just goes to show that kids are being exposed to how the world is sooner and sooner. There is a reason five-year-olds wanna go see Deadpool, and why kids cuss at their parents so soon. It's just their exposure to the world sooner, and because younger children wanna go see movies like Saw and Deadpool, that means the genre of family-friendly movies without the Pixar or Dreamworks logo, don't have much of an impact on children these days.
2.) They just don't make $$$. Pure and simple, the last live-action family film I remember seeing was 2014's "Alexander and the terrible no good, very bad day" which only made $66 million domestic. Now granted the film only had a $30 million dollar budget, $66 million isn't really that much in the grand scheme of movies, and is actually kinda small. The fact is that when studios go through the process to release these movies, nobody goes to see them, effectively wasting the studios time and, more importantly, $.
3.) They don't attract the stars they used to. Back in the days of say "The Santa Clause", they got then huge A-lister Tim Allen, who was a household name. The fact is that the average Joe will go pay to see a movie based on whose name is above the marquee or on the poster, it's just how it is, and granted Steve Carell is a big-ish name, but the genre of the family friendly films don't attract A-list movie stars like they used to.
4.) The last reason is quite simply that the movie industry as a whole has changed enough to where this genre no longer fits in with what audiences like to go see nowadays. People wanna go see superhero movies, star wars, raunchy comedies, etc. But when's the last time someone wanted to see a new family film, that isn't animated?...Been a while huh? And studios know that, and, therefore, stopped putting these kinda films into production, the studio system is in a way a living breathing organism, it changes to how the people affect it with their movie watching. And it, unfortunately, decided to eliminate this genre almost altogether.
Would I like to see this genre come back? I mean it'd be nice to have more options for families at the movies, instead of just forcing children to watch film clearly made for adults. But alas, with how kids are nowadays, combined with the box office returns as of late. It does not look as though that'll happen anytime soon.
