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How Much Do Sites Like Rotten Tomatoes Affect Movie Box Office Returns?

Published: Thursday, October 19, 2017 - 4:22pm
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Sites like Rotten Tomatoes and Metacritic code and aggregate critics’ or audience reviews of movies to give people an idea of whether or not a film is worth their time.

But in 2016, movie ticket site Fandango bought Rotten Tomatoes and began posting its “Tomatometer” scores next to its listings.

Well, since then, studio execs have started to worry that those Rotten Tomato ratings matter more than they used to, according to Alissa Wilkinson, film critic with Vox.

So how much do sites like these really effect box offices returns? The Show’s Lauren Gilger is here with more on this

I spoke with Wilkinson more about this and she says certain films are “critic-proof,” like the new "Spider-Man" movie or the newest edition of Star Wars.

But especially for midsize to smaller films, a good critical review can push people in the door who wouldn’t have gone otherwise. Or if there’s a film that wasn’t expected to be good, good reviews can really pull people in.  

But that’s not always how studios see it. Here’s Wilkinson.

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