NC-17

NC-17: Adults Only

No One 17 and Under Admitted. Clearly adult. Young children will not be admitted to watch the film.

In September 1990, the MPAA introduced the rating "NC-17" ("No Children Under 17 Admitted").[35] Henry & June – previously to be assigned an "X" rating – was the first film to receive the "NC-17" rating instead.[35][36] Although films with an "NC-17" rating had more mainstream distribution opportunities than "X"-rated films, many theaters refused to screen them, most entertainment media did not accept advertising for them, and many large video outlets refused to stock them.

Commercial viability of the NC-17 rating
The NC-17 rating has been described as a "kiss of death" for any film that receives it.[57] Like the X rating it replaced, NC-17 limits a film's prospects of being marketed, screened in theaters and sold in major video outlets.[37] In 1995, United Artists released the big-budget film Showgirls (1995); it became the most widely distributed film with an NC-17 rating (showing in 1,388 cinemas simultaneously), but it was a financial failure that grossed only 45% of its $45 million budget.[58] Some modest successes can be found among NC-17 theatrical releases, however; Fox Searchlight Pictures released the original NC-17-rated American edition of the European film The Dreamers (2003) in theaters in the United States, and later released both the original NC-17 and the cut R-rated version on DVD. A Fox Searchlight spokesman said the NC-17 rating did not give them much trouble in releasing this film (they had no problem booking it, and only the Salt Lake City newspaper Deseret News refused to take the film's ad), and Fox Searchlight was satisfied with this film's United States box office result.[59] Another notable exception is Bad Education (2004), an NC-17 foreign-language film that grossed $5.2 million in the United States theatrically[60] (a moderate success for a foreign-language film[61]).

In 2000, the Directors Guild of America called the NC-17 rating an "abject failure", for causing filmmakers to re-edit films to receive an R rating, rather than accept an NC-17 rating. They argued that this was "not only compromising filmmakers’ visions, but also greatly increasing the likelihood that adult-oriented movies are seen by the very groups for which they are not intended."[62] As of March 2007, according to Variety, MPAA chairman Dan Glickman had been made aware of the attempts to introduce a new rating, or find ways to reduce the stigma of the NC-17 rating. Film studios have pressured the MPAA to retire the NC-17 rating, because of its likely impact on their film's box office revenue.[63][64]

During the controversy about the MPAA's decision to give the film Blue Valentine (2010) an NC-17 rating (The Weinstein Company challenged this decision, and the MPAA ended up awarding the same cut an R rating on appeal), actor Ryan Gosling, who stars in the film, noted that NC-17 films are not allowed wide advertisement and that, given the refusal of major cinema chains like AMC and Regal to show NC-17 rated movies, many such films will never be accessible to people who live in markets that do not have art house theatres.[65]

Legal scholar Julie Hilden wrote that the MPAA has a "masterpiece exception" that it has made for films that would ordinarily earn an NC-17 rating, if not for the broader artistic masterpiece that requires the violence depicted as a part of its message. She cites Saving Private Ryan, with its bloody depiction of the D-Day landings, as an example. This exception is troubling, Hilden argues, because it ignores context and perspective in evaluating other films and favors conventional films over edgier films that contribute newer and more interesting points to public discourse about violence.