‘Blonde,’ based on Joyce Carol Oates’ best-selling novel of the same name, will be Netflix’s first original film to be published with an NC-17 rating.

The highest grade in the Motion Picture Association film rating system, NC-17 (No One Seventeen and Under Admitted), is issued to films featuring content that the MPA deems only suitable for ages 18 and up. The rating does not label films as pornographic or obscene, but the content is more powerful than the Restricted (R) category can handle.

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Most films that acquire the classification are altered and resubmitted in order to obtain an R rating, which allows for greater distribution and commercial performance. Furthermore, an R-rating would allow youngsters under the age of 17 to attend the film with a parent or guardian. In other circumstances, studios will simply file an R rating appeal or “surrender” the classification (return the rating, leaving the film unrated). Otherwise, studios may choose to preserve the rating for a theatrical or home video release if it is commercially successful.

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While the film’s marketing promises a daring, dramatised look into Monroe’s public and private lives, the actual rationale for its adults-only rating is unclear. So yet, no one engaged in its creation has detailed or exhibited any specific occasion or moments that may have been culpable, making an accurate explanation for why it was scored so harshly inaccessible.

The Motion Picture Association of America, on the other hand, gives one broad rationale for the “18 and over” tag on the film.

‘Blonde’ is rated NC-17 by the Motion Picture Association of America because it contains “some sexual content” deemed inappropriate for young viewers.

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Although specific examples of scenes fitting this criteria have yet to be shown, director Andrew Dominik has hinted at what may have caused the picture to be rated “No One 17 and Under” in an interview published prior to the release of its first teaser trailer. “It’s a demanding movie,” he told Screen Daily in February 2022. “If the audience doesn’t like it, that’s the f***ing audience’s problem. It’s not running for public office.”