Martin Scorsese Pens Essay Calling Rotten Tomatoes ‘Hostile to Serious Filmmakers’

Posted on Wednesday, October 11th, 2017 by Hoai-Tran Bui

The animosity between the film industry and internet “aggregators” has been simmering since the summer, but it’s just kicked up a notch with the introduction of legendary director Martin Scorsese into the fray.

Scorsese penned an excoriating essay against Rotten Tomatoes, Cinemascore, and other digital aggregation sites, calling them “hostile to serious filmmakers,” and a bane on the film criticism community. It’s another entry in the ongoing debate over the influence Rotten Tomatoes has over film studios and the box office.

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Is Rotten Tomatoes Responsible for a Terrible Summer Box Office?

Posted on Monday, September 11th, 2017 by Hoai-Tran Bui

Hollywood just had one of its worst summer seasons at the box office in 20 years. And rather than blame sequel fatigue, cinematic universe fatigue, or rapidly increasing ticket prices, executives are pointing their finger at one culprit: Rotten Tomatoes.

The movie review aggregation website has been the bane of the industry — and some film critics — for years, getting accused of reducing nuanced film reviews to a good-or-bad scale. And industry insiders say that its growing omniscience on Google and ticket sales websites like Fandango are steering audiences away from movies that get bad Rotten Tomatoes scores. But is Rotten Tomatoes really solely at fault?

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