Rotten Tomatoes

Some people use a website to pick movies.

It was made by three students. One student loved Jackie Chan movies. He wanted to share reviews for them.

The site uses fun names. If a movie is good, it is "fresh." If it is bad, it is "rotten." This helps you choose what to watch. It is a very helpful tool for fans.

Do you want to know if a movie is good? Many people use a site called Rotten Tomatoes.

Three college students started the site in 1998. One student loved Jackie Chan movies. He wanted to show reviews for them. He built the site in just two weeks!

The site uses fun names for movie scores. Critics say if a movie is "fresh" or "rotten." If 60% or more critics like a film, it is fresh. If less than 60% like it, it is rotten. Some very good movies get a "Certified Fresh" seal.

This seal means the movie has a high score and many reviews. The site also has a "Popcornmeter." This shows if the audience likes the film. People can even win Golden Tomato Awards on the site. These awards honor the best and worst films of the year. It is a big tool for movie fans today.

Have you ever wondered if a movie is worth watching? Many people look at a website called Rotten Tomatoes to help them decide.

It is a popular place where people find reviews for films and TV shows. It works by gathering opinions from many different professional critics. These critics tell readers if they liked a movie or not. This makes it easier for fans to see what is popular. Some people even use it before they go to the cinema.

The website uses a special way to show scores. Critics mark their reviews as "fresh" if they are positive. They mark them as "rotten" if they are not. The site calculates a percentage called the Tomatometer. If 60% or more critics like a film, it is considered fresh. If the score is 59% or lower, it is rotten. Very special movies can earn a "Certified Fresh" seal.

To get this, a film needs a score of 75% or higher. It also needs a certain number of reviews from many critics.

The story of the site began in August 1998. A student named Senh Duong started it as a project. He was a big fan of the actor Jackie Chan. He wanted a place to see reviews for Chan's movies. He coded the whole website in just two weeks!

At first, it mostly focused on Chan's action films. Soon, it added other movies like Your Friends & Neighbors. The site became a success very quickly. It even got mentions from big names like Yahoo! and USA Today.

Rotten Tomatoes has changed hands many times over the years. Duong teamed up with classmates Patrick Y. Lee and Stephen Wang. They officially launched the site on April 1, 2000. Later, a company called IGN bought it in 2004. Then, Flixster bought the site in 2010. In 2011, Warner Bros. owned it for a while. Finally, it was sold to Fandango Media in 2016. Today, the site is a very large and influential tool.

There is even more to explore on the website. You can see what the regular audience thinks using the "Popcornmeter."

This shows if regular viewers liked the film. The site also gives out Golden Tomato Awards. These awards honor the best and worst films of the year. They even have categories for different types of movies. You can see if a film is a "User" favorite or a "Mouldy" film. It is a fun way to celebrate movies through numbers and ratings.

Rotten Tomatoes is a major American review-aggregation website. It focuses on films and television shows. The site serves as a central hub for entertainment opinions. It helps people decide what is worth watching. It is highly influential among moviegoers. In the United States, one-third of people consult the site before visiting a cinema.

The website operates through a specific mathematical process. It collects reviews from professional critics. These critics belong to writing guilds or film critic associations. To become a critic on the site, a person must earn a specific number of "likes" from users. Critics upload their reviews to specific movie pages. They must manually mark each review as "fresh" or "rotten." This step is necessary because many reviews are qualitative. Qualitative reviews do not provide a numeric score for an automatic system to use.

The site uses these markings to calculate the Tomatometer score. The Tomatometer is the percentage of positive reviews. If 60% or more reviews are positive, the film is considered "fresh." If the percentage is 59% or lower, it is considered "rotten."

For some films, the site also shows a "Popcornmeter." This is the user average. It calculates the percentage of registered users who gave a film a positive rating on a 5-star scale.

Some films achieve an even higher status called "Certified Fresh." This designation requires meeting two strict criteria. First, the Tomatometer score must be 75% or higher. Second, the film must have a minimum number of reviews. Wide-release films need at least 80 reviews. These reviews must include at least five "Top Critics." Top Critics are professionals who usually write for major newspapers. For limited releases, the requirement is 40 reviews. TV shows must have at least 20 reviews per season.

The history of the site began in August 1998. Senh Duong, a student at the University of California, Berkeley, started it as a spare-time project. He was a fan of Jackie Chan. He wanted to collect reviews for Chan's Hong Kong action movies. He coded the website in just two weeks. The first non-Chan movie featured was "Your Friends & Neighbors" in 1998. Duong later teamed up with classmates Patrick Y. Lee and Stephen Wang. They officially launched the site on April 1, 2000.

Ownership of the website has changed many times. IGN Entertainment acquired the site in June 2004. In 2010, IGN sold the website to Flixster. Warner Bros. acquired it in 2011. In February 2016, Flixster and Rotten Tomatoes were sold to Fandango Media. Fandango is owned by Comcast. Warner Bros. kept a minority stake in these merged companies. The site has also expanded into other media. In 2009, "The Rotten Tomatoes Show" aired on television. In 2017, the site launched a Facebook series called "See It/Skip It."

The site also hosts the Golden Tomato Awards. These awards honor the best and worst reviewed films of the year. There is no actual ceremony, but winners are announced online. Films are divided into wide release and limited release categories. A limited release is defined as opening in 599 or fewer theaters. A wide release opens in more than 600 theaters. There are also categories for British and Australian films. The "User" category honors the highest-rated film among users. The "Mouldy" award goes to the worst-reviewed films.

Rotten Tomatoes connects critics, audiences, and studios in a complex system. The site uses an independent outside source to provide financial forecasts. These forecasts determine how many reviews are needed for a score. Films projected to earn over $120 million need 40 reviews. Films projected to earn $60 million to $120 million need 20 reviews. Films projected to earn under $60 million need only 10 reviews. While influential, the site faces some criticism. Some say it oversimplifies reviews into a simple dichotomy. Others suggest studios can manipulate scores by choosing which critics see early screenings.