Rotten Tomatoes began as a spare-time coding project by a single undergraduate student named Senh Duong, who spent just two weeks building the website in 1998. Duong, a fan of Jackie Chan, created the site to collect reviews of Chan's Hong Kong action movies as they were released in the United States, driven by the specific release of Rush Hour in August 1998. Although the name connects to the historical practice of audiences throwing rotten tomatoes at bad stage performances, the direct inspiration for the name came from a scene in the 1992 Canadian film Léolo. The website went live on the 12th of August 1998, and immediately attracted 600 to 1,000 daily unique visitors, earning mentions from major tech portals like Netscape and Yahoo! within its first week. Duong later partnered with his University of California, Berkeley classmates Patrick Y. Lee and Stephen Wang to turn the project into a full-time business, officially launching the company on the 1st of April 2000. The first non-Chan Hollywood movie to appear on the site was Your Friends & Neighbors, released in 1998, which helped expand the platform beyond its initial niche focus.
The Corporate Ownership Journey
The ownership of Rotten Tomatoes has shifted hands multiple times since its founding, reflecting the volatile nature of the digital media landscape. In June 2004, IGN Entertainment acquired the site for an undisclosed sum, and by September 2005, IGN itself was purchased by News Corp's Fox Interactive Media. The company changed hands again in January 2010 when IGN sold the website to Flixster, a platform that combined with Rotten Tomatoes to reach 30 million unique visitors monthly. Warner Bros. acquired Rotten Tomatoes in 2011, but in February 2016, the site and its parent company Flixster were sold to Comcast's Fandango Media, with Warner Bros. retaining a minority stake. By December 2016, Fandango and all its various websites moved to the former Fox Interactive Media headquarters in Beverly Hills, California. The site has also seen significant personnel changes, such as the departure of editor-in-chief Matt Atchity in July 2017 to join The Young Turks YouTube channel, and the launch of new web series like See It/Skip It in November 2017. In March 2018, the site unveiled a new design and logo for the first time in 19 years at the South by Southwest festival, and in May 2020, it won the 2020 Webby People's Voice Award for Entertainment.The Tomatometer And Certified Fresh
The core mechanism of Rotten Tomatoes is the Tomatometer, an aggregate score calculated by tracking the percentage of positive reviews from certified critics. To be accepted as a critic, a writer must be a member of a recognized guild or association and must have their original reviews garner a specific number of user likes. A film is considered fresh if 60% or more of the reviews are positive, and rotten if less than 60% are positive. The site also calculates a Certified Fresh seal for movies that achieve a Tomatometer of 75% or better with at least 80 reviews, including 5 Top Critics, or 40 reviews for limited releases. This seal is not automatic; the score must remain consistent and unlikely to deviate significantly before being granted. If a film's score drops and remains consistently below 70%, it loses the Certified Fresh designation. The system requires a minimum number of reviews to display a score, with thresholds varying based on the film's projected box office: 40 reviews for films projected to make over $120 million, 20 for those projected to make $60 million or more, and 10 for films projected to make under $60 million. The site also features a Popcornmeter, which calculates the percentage of registered users who have rated the film positively on a 5-star scale, and in August 2024, introduced a Verified Hot badge for films with an audience score of 90% or higher among verified ticket purchasers.