Murdoch’s IGN sells Rotten Tomatoes to Flixster

IGN Entertainment, a part of Rupert Murdoch's News Corp., yesterday sold its movie reviews aggregation website Rotten Tomatoes to Flixster Inc.

Under the terms of the all-stock deal, News Corp. will get a minority equity stake in 4-year-old Flixster, the producer of the world's largest online movie community at www.flixster.com, for an undislosed sum.

News Corp. acquired Rotten Tomatoes in 2005 as part of IGN Entertainment for $650 million.

The companies expect the combined entity to be better able to compete against larger players such as Internet Movie Database (IMDb), Yahoo Movies and AOL's Moviefone.

''In the tradition of great partnerships like Batman and Robin, Michael Jordan and Scottie Pippen, and peanut butter and chocolate, we are very pleased to announce that Rotten Tomatoes is merging with Flixster,'' Rotten Tomatoes said in its website.

''Ultimately, the combination of Flixster and Rotten Tomatoes aims to be the most comprehensive movie information source, both for users on our sites and on other platforms such as Facebook. To do that, we'll be using a database of more than 250,000 movies, 2.3 billion user reviews, 500,000 critic reviews, more than 20,000 trailers and videos, Tomatometer and Flixster Scores, movie news and interviews, and showtimes and ticket information,'' the statement said.