1.07 billion dollars was how much Toy Story 4 made.
45% of tickets sold went to families with kids.
55% of those sales came from teenagers or adults without kids.

Disney CEO Bob Chapek just released a statement about the future of R rated content on Disney+, saying he is open to putting rated R movies on the platform.

Doing that, he made a claim which angered some people online, mentioning how he doesn’t feel parents want to watch an animated movie once their kids are in bed. Something which is a pretty understandable statement, but many headlines have made the claim adults don’t care for animated content.

While that’s not really what Bob Chapek said, wanted to dive into if animation and adults really have a market that aligns.

To figure this out, the first example I wanted to look at is Crunchyroll, which is a streaming service catering to anime.

They have 120 million users, with over 5 million premium subscribers.

75% of those users are over the age of 35.
18 years old is the median age for free viewers.

Which just to compare.

35 is the median age for Disney+.
41 is the median for Netflix.
25-44 makes up over 50% of HBO Max users.

Crunchyroll clearly has a younger audience on free accounts, but premium accounts change that, coming closer to the late 20s.

Also, while 75% being under 35 is clearly a win for the idea animation equals kids, having 25% of 120 million people being over 35 is still a lot.

The second thing is how many adults statistically watch cartoons?

Found one study showing 69% of adults watch at least two hours of animated content per month.

This can come from a variety of places, with popular examples being something like a Pixar movie, but more common, a more teen/adult geared show such as the Simpsons or Family Guy.

Which looking at the numbers, the Simpsons during it’s prime averaged 15 million viewers per episode, where today it’s 2-4 million, largely getting a lift off specials.

Family Guy also did well, averaging 7.2 million viewers per episode in the late 2000s and early 2010’s.

Rick & Morty, also a very popular one, getting 7.9 million viewers per episode in the most recent season who were 18+.

All these shows obviously catering heavily to people in their late teens and early 20s, while still having many kids watching, but they do carry adult viewers.

This makes a case cartoons still do hit adult viewers reasonably often in the month.

Third and final, Studio Ghibli.

This is less of an example with numbers, but more of just a case of my favorite movie studio, which makes animated content designed for everyone and it gets everyone watching.

Studio Ghibli launched in 1985, with two of their first films being produced at the same time and both coming out in 1988.

One was My Neighbor Totoro, which was a clear kid geared film, featuring things such as a cat taxi cab and a giant spirit beast.

The second was Grave of the Fireflies, a film which no kid should ever watch, focusing on two children suffering from malnutrition in Japan during the final days of World War 2.

Both films finding success in different ways, with Totoro making 41 million dollars at the box office in a US release and Grave of the Fireflies, not getting a release in the US until 2018, but in 1998, it was a high selling VHS tape.

Studio Ghibli focusing on animation for everyone has managed to carve a niche, both Netflix and HBO Max often mention in marketing that they have their works for either US or EU distribution.

The company is also a merchandise power player as well.

#sepratx