• by Erik Sass  @eriksass1, January 4, 2010

Flixster Inc., owner of online movie community Flixster.com, has acquired Rotten Tomatoes, which aggregates professional movie reviews, from IGN Entertainment, the companies announced Monday. Although the financial terms of the deal were not disclosed, the companies did say that IGN, which is owned by News Corp., will get a minority stake in Flixster as part of the transaction; Roy Bahat, president of IGN Entertainment, is also joining Flixster's board of directors as an observer.

The acquisition will let Flixster and Rotten Tomatoes pool their audiences for advertisers, offering greater scale and reach with ad sales across both sites, and should also allow them to grow their respective audiences through cross-promotions directing traffic to each other's content. Currently, Flixster claims over 20 million users per month, plus another 30 million occasional users, while Rotten Tomatoes has about ten million, for a combined audience of over 30 million. The two sites have already collaborated in a number of areas, with deals bringing syndicated movies reviews from Rotten Tomatoes to Flixster; the News Corp. stake in Flixster and Bahat's perch on its board suggests a future content-sharing arrangement with News Corp.'s MySpace is also a distinct possibility.

Altogether, the combined entity will control content offerings including a database of 250,000 movies, 2.3 billion user reviews, 20,000 trailers and videos, exclusive movie news and original editorial content, and various applications for moviegoers including theater and show listings, maps, and online ticket sales. Users will still be able to interact with both sites as separate entities, including access via the Web sites and mobile apps for smartphones, as well as embedded movie applications on Facebook and MySpace. Meanwhile, the sale of Rotten Tomatoes will allow IGN to focus on its core growth areas, including video game and men's lifestyle content.

In 2009, movie box office sales were noteworthy as one of the few growth areas in an otherwise dismal media environment. The last holiday weekend of the year alone saw box office sales of $278 million -- up from last year's record-breaking $253 million, per AP. Full-year cinema ad revenues are supposed to top $10 billion, compared to a previous record of $9.7 billion in 2007. Record audiences seem to have benefited the movie sites, with Rotten Tomatoes reporting a record-breaking average 40% year-over-year growth in unique visitors over the last five months.