Warner Bros. buys Rotten Tomatoes parent Flixster

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Warner Bros. Home Entertainment Group said it had struck an agreement to buy Flixster, the parent company of Rotten Tomatoes, a website that analyzes movie reviews, awarding films a given number of tomatoes. So the next time a Warner Bros. movie gets bad reviews, the studio should be the first to know about it.

Flixster also owns a popular social media site devoted to entertainment. Overall, Flixster has around 25 million users.

Warner Bros. said it planned to use the ‘powerful Flixster brand and technical expertise to launch a number of initiatives designed to grow digital content ownership.’

In a call with analysts to discuss first quarter earnings, Time Warner Chief Executive Jeff Bewkes said, the comnpany would develop a platform to sell movies from all studios in ‘an agnostic way that will benefit the whole industry.’

Terms of the deal were not disclosed.

-- Joe Flint

For the record: This post was updated to include remarks on the purchase from Time Warner Chief Executive Jeff Bewkes.

Related Post: Warner Bros. in advance talks to buy Flixster