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Fandango buys Rotten Tomatoes and Flixster from Warner Bros.

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Fandango, the largest online movie-ticket seller, is buying film review websites Rotten Tomatoes and Flixster from Warner Bros. Entertainment.

Financial terms were not disclosed, but the companies said in a statement that Warner Bros., based in Burbank, will take a minority stake in Fandango as part of the deal.

Fandango, a unit of Comcast Corp.’s NBCUniversal, has been trying to grow its ticket-selling business by acquiring other firms.

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Last month, the Los Angeles-based company said it is acquiring M-Go, a site that lets users purchase and rent digital movies and TV shows online, in a move to bolster its perks for ticket buyers.

Rotten Tomatoes aggregates movie reviews from a trove of publications online in order to assign a positive (“fresh”) or negative (“rotten”) score. The reviews are tallied up to determine what percentage of critics liked or disliked each movie.

Fandango hopes to benefit from having access to Rotten Tomatoes’ millions of users, and could use the popular website and its apps to direct more movie fans to its ticket-selling site.

In today’s world of instant access to movie information online, a Rotten Tomatoes score can be highly influential to ticket buyers and a coveted stamp of approval for studios.

“Flixster and Rotten Tomatoes are invaluable resources for movie fans, and we look forward to growing these successful properties,” said Fandango President Paul Yanover.

Rotten Tomatoes launched in 2008 and was acquired by Flixster in 2010. They joined Warner Bros. the following year.

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Flixster’s and Rotten Tomatoes’ websites and apps will remain intact after the acquisition by Fandango. However, Flixster Video, a service for redeeming digital copies of movies and TV shows, will shut down later this year.

Follow Ryan Faughnder on Twitter for more entertainment business coverage: @rfaughnder

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