• by Laurie Sullivan  @lauriesullivan, August 3, 2021

NBCUniversal’s Fandango, the digital network for entertainment, will combine two popular movie and TV streaming services — Vudu and FandangoNOW — to support ecommerce and improve on-demand entertainment services.

Vudu, once owned by Walmart, will provide the ecommerce service, charging fees to rent or own individual titles. The updated service is replacing FandangoNOW as the official movie and TV store for Roku.

The change takes place today. 

Consumers can currently buy or rent movies on Roku through FandangoNOW. Starting Today, consumers can buy and rent movies on Roku through Vudu, as the service becomes Roku’s official digital movie retailer or transactional video-on-demand service.

Fandango, which began as a movie-ticketing business in 2000, built a digital network serving tens of millions of fans — from ways to search and discover movies and TV shows on Rotten Tomatoes, to three theatrical ticketing apps and now an updated Vudu on-demand streaming destination.

The new Vudu service will offer more than 200,000 new release and catalog movies and TV shows to rent or buy, including the largest collection of 4K UHD titles and thousands of titles to watch for free, no subscription required.

The latest releases available on Vudu include “F9: The Fast Saga,” Pixar’s “Luca,” “The Conjuring: The Devil Made Me Do It,” “Peter Rabbit 2,” “The Hitman’s Wife’s Bodyguard,” “A Quiet Place Part II,” Disney’s “Cruella,” “Godzilla vs. Kong,” “In the Heights” and more. Marvel Studios’ “Black Widow” arrives next week on Vudu

Vudu — which Fandango acquired in 2020 — is available in more than 75 million U.S. TV-connected device households, according to The NPD Group. The company has more than 60 million registered users and serves millions of consumers daily across Smart TVs, connected devices, mobile and online. 

With the change, Fandango plans to give partners more ways to offer reward options such as promo codes for movies and TV shows on Vudu.

A Fandango spokesman said the combination should make the rewards programs more attractive to partners. Dozens of rewards and loyalty programs are either available now or are scheduled to launch during the next year. There are programs planned with Walmart, Dr. Pepper, Johnson & Johnson, and Verizon.

Beginning today, FandangoNOW customers can transfer their accounts — movie and TV collections — to Vudu. The Movie Store and TV Store on Roku devices will automatically update from FandangoNOW to the new Vudu.