The Hunger Games Scores a PG-13 Rating

Set to be one of the big releases this year, The Hunger Games is coming to movie screens on March 23, 2012. Looking poised to be the next “big thing” (think Twilight and Harry Potter) the movie’s violent premise of teens fighting to their death will likely stretch the limits of the PG-13 rating, given by the MPAA for “intense violent thematic material and disturbing images—all involving teens”. Director Gary Ross has made comments about the violence in the film. Quoting from the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, Ross stated on MTV last year, “I don’t need to have a huge prosthetic budget or make this movie incredibly bloody in order for it to be just as compelling, just as scary and just as riveting.” Yet in a more recent interview in Entertainment Weekly, Ross is changing his tune just a little: “Is it violent? Yes. Do we back off from what it is? No, we don’t.”

Our observations at Parent Previews in the past few years have shown the MPAA to be willing to accept higher levels of violence in a PG-13 movie if there is virtually no sexual content and few profanities. Perhaps this tradeoff will be the tactic used to squeeze The Hunger Games into the teen-friendly movie rating.

Written by Suzanne Collins, the author has put up a report on her Facebook page giving her opinions on the new movie. Not surprisingly she is glowing over the final results.

Look for our full family movie review of The Hunger Games.