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Rotten Tomatoes is an American review-aggregation website for film and television.

The company was launched in August 1998 by three undergraduate students at the University of California, Berkeley: Senh Duong, Patrick Y. Lee, and Stephen Wang.[6][7][8][9] Although the name “Rotten Tomatoes” connects to the practice of audiences throwing rotten tomatoes when disapproving of a poor stage performance, the original inspiration comes from a scene featuring tomatoes in the Canadian film Léolo (1992).[10]

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Since January 2010, Rotten Tomatoes has been owned by Flixster, which was in turn acquired by Warner Bros. in 2011. In February 2016, Rotten Tomatoes and its parent site Flixster were sold to Comcast’s Fandango.[11] Warner Bros. retained a minority stake in the merged entities, including Fandango.[1]

tory H is

Rotten Tomatoes was launched on August 12, 1998, as a sparetime project by Senh Duong.

[12] His objective in creating Rotten Tomatoes was “to create a site where people can get access to reviews from a variety of critics in the U.S.”[13] As a fan of Jackie Chan, Duong was inspired to create the website after collecting all the reviews of Chan’s Hong Kong action movies as they were being released in the United States. The catalyst for the creation of the website was Rush Hour (1998), Chan’s first major Hollywood crossover, which was originally planned to release in August 1998.

Duong coded the website in two weeks and the site went live the same month, but the release of Rush Hour was delayed until September 1998. Besides Jackie Chan films, he began including other films on Rotten Tomatoes, extending it beyond Chan’s fandom.[14][15] The first non-Chan Hollywood movie whose reviews were featured on Rotten Tomatoes was Your Friends & Neighbors (1998).

The website was an immediate success, receiving mentions

by Netscape, Yahoo!, and USA Today within the first week of its launch; it attracted “600–1000 daily unique visitors” as a result. [citation needed]

Duong teamed up with University of California, Berkeley classmates Patrick Y. Lee and Stephen Wang, his former partners at the Berkeley, California-based web design firm Design Reactor, to pursue Rotten Tomatoes on a full-time basis. They officially launched it on April 1, 2000.[16] In June 2004, IGN Entertainment acquired Rotten Tomatoes for an undisclosed sum.[17] In September 2005, IGN was bought by News Corp’s Fox Interactive Media.[18] In January 2010, IGN sold the website to Flixster.[19] The combined reach of both companies is 30 million unique visitors a month across all different platforms, according to the companies.[20] In 2011, Warner Bros. acquired Rotten Tomatoes.[21] In early 2009, Current Television launched The Rotten Tomatoes Show, a televised version of the

web review site. It was hosted

by Brett Erlich and Ellen Fox and written by Mark Ganek.

The show aired Thursdays at 10:30 EST[22] until September 16, 2010. It returned as a much shorter segment of InfoMania, a satirical news show that ended in 2011.[citation needed] By late 2009, the website was designed to enable Rotten Tomatoes users to create and

join groups to discuss various aspects of film. One group, “The Golden Oyster Awards”, accepted votes of members for various awards, spoofing the better-known Academy Awards or Golden Globes. When Flixster bought the company, they disbanded the groups.[23][citation needed]

tion devoted to scripted television the site launched a new web series series, called TV Zone, was created on Facebook, See It/Skip It, hosted as a subsection of the website.[24] by Jacqueline Coley and Segun Oduolowu.[27] In February 2016, Rotten Tomatoes and its parent site Flixster were sold In March 2018, the site announced to Comcast’s Fandango. Warner its new design, icons and logo for Bros retained a minority stake in the the first time in 19 years at South by merged entities, including Fandango. Southwest.[28] [4]

As of February 2011, new community features have been added and others removed. For example, users can no longer sort films by Fresh Ratings from Rotten Ratings, and vice versa. [citation needed]

In December 2016, Fandango and all its various websites moved to Fox Interactive Media’s former headquarters in Beverly Hills, California.[25]

On September 17, 2013, a sec-

In July 2017, the website’s editor-in-chief since 2007, Matt Atchity, left to join The Young Turks YouTube channel.[26] On November 1, 2017,

Rotten Tomatoes is a top 1000 site, placing around #400 globally and top 150 for the US only, according to website ranker Alexa.[29] Monthly unique visitors to the rottento-

Traf

fic

matoes.com domain is 26M global (14.4M US) according to audience measurement service Quantcast.[30]

Featur

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Critic aggregate score Rotten Tomatoes staff first collect online reviews from writers who are certified members of various writing guilds or film critic-associations. To be accepted as a critic on the website, a critic’s original reviews must garner a specific number of “likes” from users. Those classified as “Top Critics” generally write for major newspapers.

The critics upload their reviews to the movie page on the website, and need to mark their review “fresh” if it’s generally favorable or “rotten” otherwise. It is necessary for the critic to do so as some reviews are qualitative and do not grant a numeric score, making it impossible for the system to be automatic.[citation needed] The website keeps track of all the reviews counted for each film and calculates the percentage of positive reviews. Major recently released films can attract more than 400 reviews. If the positive reviews make up 60% or more, the film is considered “fresh”, in that a supermajority of the reviewers approve of the film. If the positive reviews are less than 60%, the film is considered “rotten”. An average score on a 0 to 10 scale is also calculated. With each review, a short excerpt of the review is quoted that also serves a hyperlink to the complete review essay for anyone interested to read the critic’s full thoughts on the subject.

“Top Critics”, such as Roger Ebert, Desson Thomson, Stephen Hunter, Owen

Gleiberman, Lisa Schwarzbaum, Peter Travers and Michael Phillips are identified in a sub-listing that calculates their reviews separately. Their opinions are also included in the general rating. When there are sufficient reviews, the staff creates and posts a consensus statement to express the general reasons for the collective opinion of the film.[citation needed] This rating is indicated by an equivalent icon at the film listing, to give the reader a one-glance look at the general critical opinion about the work. The “Certified Fresh” seal is reserved for movies that satisfy two criteria: a “Tomatometer” of 75% or better and at least 80 reviews (40 for limited release movies) from “Tomatometer” critics (including 5 Top Critics). Films earning this status will keep it unless the positive critical percentage drops below 70%.[31] Films with 100% positive ratings but fewer than required reviews may not receive the “Certified Fresh” seal. Tomatometer Rankings Icon Score Description Certified Fresh 2018.svg 70–100% Certified Fresh: Wide-release films with a score of 75% or higher that are reviewed by at least 80 critics, of which 5 are “Top Critics”, are given this seal. The “Certified Fresh” seal remains until the score drops below 70%.[31] Films with limited releases require only 40 reviews (including 5 from “Top Critics”) to qualify for this seal. For TV shows, only individual seasons are eligible for consideration, and each must have at least 20 critic reviews.[31]

Rotten Tomatoes.svg 60–100% Fresh: Films or TV shows with a score of 60% or higher that do not meet the requirements for the “Certified Fresh” seal.

Rotten Tomatoes rotten.svg 0–59% Rotten: Films or TV shows with a score of 0–59% receive this seal.

When a film or TV show reaches the requirements for the “Certified Fresh”, it is not automatically granted the seal, but is instead flagged for the staff’s consideration. Once the team assesses the reviews and response to the film or TV show, and decide that it is unlikely that the score will fall below the minimum requirements in the future, they will then mark it as “Certified Fresh”.[32] Golden Tomato Awards In the year 2000, Rotten Tomatoes announced the RT Awards honoring the best-reviewed films of the year according to the website’s rating system.[33] This was later renamed the Golden Tomato Awards.[34] The nominees and winners are announced on the website, although there is no actual awards ceremony.

The films are divided into wide release and limited release categories. Limited releases are defined as opening in 599 or fewer theaters at initial release. Platform releases, movies initially released under 600 theaters but later receiving wider distribution, fall under this definition. Any film opening in more than 600 theaters is considered wide release.[34] There are also two categories purely for British and Australian films. The “User”-category represents the highest rated film among users, and the “Mouldy”-award represents the worst-reviewed films of the year. A movie must have 40 (originally 20) or more rated reviews to be considered for domestic categories. It must have 500 or more user ratings to be considered for the “User”-category.

Films are further classified based on film genre. Each movie is eligible in only one genre, aside from non-English language films, which can be included in both their genre and the respective “Foreign” category.

Once a film is considered eligible, its “votes” are counted. Each critic from the website’s list gets one vote (as determined by their review), all weighted equally. Because reviews are continually added, manually and otherwise, a cutoff date at which new reviews are not counted toward the Golden Tomato awards is initiated each year, usually the first of the new year. Reviews without ratings are not counted toward the results of the Golden Tomato Awards.[34] Critics consensus Each movie features a brief summary of the reviews used in that entry’s Tomatometer aggregate score. These are written by Jeff Giles, a longtime author for the site.[35] Audience score and reviews Positive audience score Negative audience score Positive and negative audience score icons Each movie features a “user average”, which calculates the percentage of registered users who have rated the film positively on a 5-star scale, similar to calculation of recognized critics’ reviews.

In May 2019, Rotten Tomatoes introduced a verified rating system that would replace the earlier system where users were merely required to register in order to submit a rating. Henceforth, in addition to creating an account, users will have to verify their ticket purchase through Fandango, a ticketing company which Rotten Tomatoes is a subsidiary of. While users can still leave reviews

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Spangler, Todd (May 23, 2019). “Rotten Tomatoes Revamps Movie Audience Scores to Focus on Verified Ticket Lee, Chris (June 9, 2017). “How Hollywood Came to Fear and Loathe Rotten Tomatoes”. Vanity Fair. Retrieved Buyers”. Variety (magazine). Retrieved May 2, 2020. NBCUniversal’s Fandango acquired the reviews-aggregation June 14, 2017.

Knight, Chris (August 31, 2017). “Why Hollywood doesn’t want you to see Tulip Fever, which has been buried deep site in 2016 from Warner Bros., which retains a 25% stake in Rotten Tomatoes. “rottentomatoes.com Competitive Analysis, Marketing Mix and Traffic - Alexa”. alexa.com. Retrieved August 14, for three long years”. National Post. Retrieved October 5, 2017.

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Entrepreneurship Program”. Berkeley-Haas Entrepreneurship Program. Retrieved April 18, 2018.

Hibberd, James (March 23, 2017). “Rotten Tomatoes Is ‘the Destruction of Our Business,’ Says Director”. Entertain“Notable Cal Alumni”. Cal Alumni Association, UC Berkeley. February 21, 2018. Retrieved April 18, 2018. ment Weekly. Time Inc. Retrieved June 2, 2017.

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Lazarus, David (April 26, 2001). “Fresh Look For Rotten Tomatoes / Help from college buddies elevates movie-rat- “Suffragette (2015)”. Rotten Tomatoes. Fandango Media. Retrieved September 18, 2018. ing website beyond hobby status”. San Francisco Chronicle. Retrieved January 12, 2013.

“Meryl Streep Rips Rotten Tomatoes for ‘Infuriating’ Lack of Female Critics”. TheWrap. October 7, 2015. Retrieved “Senh Duong interview”. Asianconnections.com. August 19, 1999. Archived from the original on September 27, April 27, 2020.

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Shoard, Catherine (June 15, 2018). “Ocean’s 8 stars blame dominance of male critics for film’s mixed reviews”. The “20 Years Later, Rush Hour Is Still a Buddy-Cop Gem”. Rotten Tomatoes. September 18, 2018.

Guardian. Guardian News and Media. Retrieved June 16, 2018.

Semley, John (2018). Hater: On the Virtues of Utter Disagreeability. Penguin Books. pp. 26–27. ISBN Raftery, Brian (November 20, 2017). “’Justice League’, Rotten Tomatoes, and DC Fans’ Persecution Complex”.

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Wired. ISSN 1059-1028. Retrieved May 15, 2019.

Ryan, Tim. “Rotten Tomatoes Oral History”. Rotten Tomatoes. Fandango Media. Retrieved December 4, 2009.

“IGN Entertainment to Acquire Rotten Tomatoes”. ign.com. = IGN Entertainment. June 29, 2004. Retrieved January 27, 2017.

“News Corp. Acquires IGN for $650 Million”. Bloomberg. September 10, 2005. Retrieved January 27, 2017.

Graser, Marc (January 4, 2010). “Flixster buys Rotten Tomatoes”. Variety. Penske Media Corporation. Retrieved January 4, 2010.

“News Corp. Unloads Rotten Tomatoes Onto Flixster”. TechCrunch (AOL). January 4, 2010. Retrieved February 19, 2016.

Sweney, Mark (May 4, 2011). “Warner Bros buys Rotten Tomatoes owner Flixster”. The Guardian. Guardian News.

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Feature

without verifying, those reviews will not account for the average audience score displayed next to the Tomatometer.[36][37]

Localized versions Localized versions of the site available in the United Kingdom, India, and Australia were discontinued following the acquisition of Rotten Tomatoes by Fandango. The Mexican version of the site, Tomatazos [es], remains active.

API The Rotten Tomatoes API provides limited access to critic and audience ratings and reviews, allowing developers to incorporate Rotten Tomatoes data on other websites. The free service is intended for use in the US only; permission is required for use elsewhere.

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