Rotten Tomatoes Introduces a Popcorn Meter for Audience Reviews

Hot and stale is the new fresh and rotten.

By Russ Burlingame

Review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes today announced a new program to codify audience reviews -- or at least "verified" audience reviews -- into a more official score. While "fresh," "rotten," and "certified fresh" will continue to refer to professional reviewers vetted by Rotten Tomatoes, their audience score will now take on popcorn terminology, with good reviews ("good" being 3.5 out of 5 or higher) being "hot" and bad reviews being "stale." A "Verified Hot" badge will appear on movies that achieve an audience score of 90% or higher on the Popcornmeter (and meet some other, as-yet-undefined criteria).

The "Verified Hot" badge is a complement to "Certified Fresh," a designation that says a movie has earned a 75% "fresh" rating or higher from a predetermined number of accredited critics. The first movies to receive the Verified Hot designation on the Popcornmeter include some of the summer's hottest titles: Deadpool & Wolverine, Twisters, Bad Boys: Ride or Die, Fly Me to the Moon, It Ends with Us, and more.

"On Rotten Tomatoes, fans love to consult our verified audience score, in addition to the Tomatometer critics' score, when discovering new movies and deciding what they want to watch next," said Amanda Norvell, SVP, Direct-to-Consumer Services at Fandango. "With the addition of Rotten Tomatoes Verified Hot, we are excited to celebrate and shine a spotlight on the theatrical films that fans have unanimously embraced and have taken the time to share their incredible moviegoing experience with other fans."

In addition to introducing Verified Hot, Rotten Tomatoes has clarified the "Popcornmeter" rating system for all their TV shows and movies. Starting today, fans will see a full, red popcorn bucket with a "Hot" label if 60% or more of the audience rates the title with 3.5 stars or higher. Otherwise, a green tipped-over popcorn bucket will be labeled "Stale," when less than 60% of the audience provides a rating of 3.5 stars or higher.

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Verified purchases include users who have proven they bought tickets to the movie on Fandango, the movie ticketing platform. The move was made to prevent disgruntled users from going after movies or actors they don't like with negative reviews -- an issue that had divided audiences and put Rotten Tomatoes in the middle of a number of controversies.

The list of Verified Hot Summer Movies includes:

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