Emma Stone and Mark Ruffalo star in a scene from Searchlight Pictures’ “Poor Things.”AP
Perhaps sex doesn’t sell — at least not in Hollywood anymore.
Despite recent hits like “Saltburn” and “Poor Things” making a splash with their risqué scenes, sex on the big screen has plummeted nearly 40% since the turn of the century, according to a new study.
From 2000 to 2023, both the overall number of steamy on-screen scenes and the amount of movies containing depictions of actors getting frisky have gone way south, the study conducted by data scientist Stephen Follows for the Economist found.
Follows compared the level of sex content in the 250 top-grossing films of each year since 2000 and found a clear trend.
As time has passed, moviemakers have put less and less skin-on-skin contact in their films.
A scene from Saltburn with actor Barry Keoghan showing off his shoulders underneath his bathrobe.Amazon StudiosEXPLORE MORE
And it’s not just that sex scenes are becoming less intense and dirty.
A driving factor is an increase in the number of top 250 films with no sex at all, the study found.
This reached a peak in 2019 when half of the 250 top-grossing films that year were “squeaky clean” and the amount has only dipped slightly with roughly 46% of last year’s top movies having no sex scenes.
Action and thriller movies have seen the sharpest dips in the amount of whoopee-making among movie genres, while romantic films had the smallest decline.
Emma Stone in a scene from “Poor Things.”AP
To see if the virginizing of Hollywood was part of a larger trend in prudish behavior or an anomaly, the study looked at other factors that could bring a film up to a PG-13 or R rating.
But that amount of violence, drug use, and profanities have a more steady stream over the years — with a slight uptick in violence.
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Follows offers a number of theories that could explain the downward trend including changes in social norms, global market considerations, and the prevalence of streaming services, or greater care for the wellbeing of actors on set.
He also suggested Gen Z’s alleged disinterest in sex, the rise of intimacy coordinators in Hollywood and even online porn — making it easier to get adult content than ever before so movie producers don’t have to worry about fulfilling those needs.
