The emergence of explicit films like Poor Things or All of Us Strangers has been heralded as marking a renaissance of sex on screen – in the face of a lack of interest from Gen Z audiences. However, a new report suggests that scenes of Hollywood sex is in rapid decline: there is almost 40% less sexual content in major films than there was at the turn of the millennium.
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Commissioned by The Economist, the report compiled data on the 250 highest-grossing films each year since 2000 and found that films released in 2023 had just over 60% of the erotic content found in the top 250 in 2000. Sorted by genre , the decline was sharpest in action films (down around 70% over the same period) – while romance films saw much less change, falling just under 20%, according to The Guardian.
At the same time, the percentage of top-grossing films without sexual content has increased significantly, from about 18% in 2000 to 46% in 2023. The report concludes that this is “the biggest factor in this reduction in sexual content” – not only are there fewer sexual acts on screen, but proportionately fewer films are focused on.
The report suggests a number of possible reasons behind the decline of sex scenes, including changes in public taste with a “preference for content that either avoids sexual themes altogether or deals with them more subtly”; concern that the sex scenes could impact the worldwide release “which would result in more restrictive age ratings or censorship, thereby reducing a film's potential reach”; and the increasing influence of “intimacy coordinators”, reflecting actors' discomfort with the number of sex scenes previously required of them.
