Movie social networking site, Flixster, said today it has acquired movie review site Rotten Tomatoes from IGN Entertainment, a division of News Corp.

News Corp will receive a minority equity stake in Flixster as part of the deal, financial terms were not disclosed.

Both Flixster and Rotten Tomatoes will continue to be available to Internet users as individual properties. The combination of Flixster and Rotten Tomatoes reaches a global audience of 30 million monthly visitors across a number of platforms, including their websites, social networks and via apps for mobile devices.

"Rotten Tomatoes has built a fantastically well-known brand that moviegoers trust when making their decisions," said Steve Polsky, Flixster president and COO.

"Combined with Flixster's social networking and word-of-mouth, we're creating the leading movie destination on the Internet."

Together the companies will have a database of more than 250,000 movies, 2.3 billion user reviews, 500,000 critic reviews, and more than 20,000 trailers and videos.

The deal follows a series of moves by IGN Entertainment to refocus its efforts on building out its suite of game-related and men's-lifestyle offerings.

"Joining Rotten Tomatoes with Flixster creates a company that can dominate the online movie category," said Roy Bahat, president of IGN Entertainment, who will join Flixster's board of directors as an observer.

"This also enables IGN to focus on serving the male 18-to-34 audience - especially videogamers - and the advertisers looking to reach them."
 

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