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Hollywood has suffered its worst summer at the box office in more than a decade, with last weekend’s Labor Day haul being the lowest in nearly 20 years. Movie executives have decided to blame Rotten Tomatoes and its “Tomatometer” scores for the fiasco, which are sweeping the web: complainants say that the aggregator hacks off critical nuance and holds a loose definition of who qualifies as a critic, making their scores illegitimate.
In an absurdist plot twist, Rotten Tomatoes is owned by film companies. Fandango, a unit of NBCUniversal, which also owns Universal Pictures, has a 75 percent stake, with the balance held by Warner Bros. Fandango bought control from Warner last year for an undisclosed price. (All parties insist that Rotten Tomatoes operates independently.) Mr. Yanover said it was silly for studios to make Rotten Tomatoes a box office scapegoat.
In an absurdist plot twist, Rotten Tomatoes is owned by film companies. Fandango, a unit of NBCUniversal, which also owns Universal Pictures, has a 75 percent stake, with the balance held by Warner Bros. Fandango bought control from Warner last year for an undisclosed price. (All parties insist that Rotten Tomatoes operates independently.) Mr. Yanover said it was silly for studios to make Rotten Tomatoes a box office scapegoat.