Hollywood sex scenes have declined by 40% since 2000

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The advent of explicit films such as Poor Things, Saltburn and All of Us Strangers has been heralded as marking a revival of sex on screen – in the face of a reported lack of interest from Gen Z audiences. However, a new report suggests that in fact the Hollywood sex scene is declining fast: there is almost 40% less sexual content in major films than there was at the start of the millennium.

Commissioned by the Economist from data analyst Stephen Follows, the report assembled data on the 250 highest-grossing films each year since 2000, and found movies released in 2023 had just over 60% of the erotic content found in the top 250 in 2000. Broken down by genre, the decline was steepest in action movies (a drop of approximately 70% over the same period) – while romantic films recorded much less change, with a drop of just under 20%.

At the same time, the percentage of top-grossing films with no sexual content at all jumped significantly, from about 18% in 2000 to 46% in 2023. Follows concludes that this is “the biggest driver of this reduction in sexual content” – not only are there fewer sex acts on screen, but they are concentrated in proportionately fewer movies.

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