Warner Bros. Acquires Rotten Tomatoes, Flixster
by Sean Comer
Variety reports that Warner Bros. Home Entertainment now owns two of media consumers' most trusted critical filters.
The Hollywood trade publication announced Wednesday that the entertainment Goliath has purchased encyclopedic movie-lover community Flixster and Flixster's prolific critical off-shoot Rotten Tomatoes for approximately $60 million.
A Warner Bros. spokesperson claims it's a maneuver that strictly impacts advancing the studio's growing digital media roll-out.
"Driving the growth of digital ownership is a central, strategic focus for Warner Bros," said the studio. "The acquisition of Flixster will allow us to advance that strategy and promote initiatives that will help grow digital ownership."
It's the potential for questionable synergy and convergence that may make audiences nervous. Rotten Tomatoes is a particularly big critical voice online, and a filter that weighs fan approval alongside critical raves to take the guess-work out of considering average-fan enjoyment versus sometimes more elitist critcs' more lofty standards.
Suddenly, one of the world's largest media purveyors and an enthusiastic cross-promoter owns one of the Internet's most trusted movie-review resources. Warner Bros. can claim, as it already has, that the two sites will continue operating independently. A movie studio "owning" a recognized critic will be enough to plant seeds of doubt as to whether or not studio brass can resist edicts to tinker with certain titles' "freshness" ratings.
And what of Flixster? Social media audiences are already notoriously wary of embedded marketers invading their communities and forums.
The same Warner Bros. spokesperson claims that the studio is strictly interested in the film-discovery database that 25 million users use to seek out interesting flicks, but studio ownership could start distinctly controlling the conversation and inundating members with unwanted marketing in the name of "growing digital ownership" . . . . of Warner Bros. media.
If Warner Bros. is to truly make the best of this, it may take a candid, hands-off approach to the role the studio plays as the two sites' new Lord and Master.