Warner Bros. buys Flixster, Rotten Tomatoes

By Geoff Duncan Published May 4, 2011

Rotten Tomatoes — Image used with permission by copyright holder

Warner Bros. Home Entertainment has announced it has acquired movie discovery service Flixter and, along with it, the Rotten Tomatoes movie review site for an undisclosed amount. The acquisitions are another step in Warner Bros. efforts to stake out more ground in the digital content realm—and potentially put Warner Bros. and its partners in a position to compete with Netflix—or at least negotiate with the video streaming and rental giant from a stronger position.

“Driving the growth of digital ownership is a central, strategic focus for Warner Bros.,” said Warner Bros. Home Entertainment president Kevin Tsujihara, in a statement. “The acquisition of Flixster will allow us to advance that strategy and promote initiatives that will help grow digital ownership.”

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The companies did not reveal the financial terms of the deal.

Warner Bros. says it plans to operate both Flixster and Rotten Tomatoes independently and work on expanding its movie discover service to delivery of digital content across a broad variety of services and devices. The move fits neatly into Warner Bros.’ recently announced “Digital Everywhere” initiative, which aims to offer one-stop shopping for consumers looking for digital content regardless of the studio that originally produced it. Under Digital Everywhere, Warner wants to enable consumers to tap into their entire cloud-based digital libraries from any service or device they own, whether that be a phone, a tablet, a PC, game console, or an Internet-connected home theater system. Warner is backing the UltraViolet format for digital movie distribution.

Flixster has already established itself as a leading movie discovery service for mobile users, with over 35 million downloads to date for Android, BlackBerry, and iOS devices. The Rotten Tomatoes movie review site boasts some 12 million visitors a month.

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Geoff Duncan writes, programs, edits, plays music, and delights in making software misbehave. He's probably the only member…

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