The Decomposition of Rotten Tomatoes
New York magazine|September 11 - 24, 2023
The most overrated metric in entertainment is erratic, reductive, and easily hacked-and yet has Hollywood in its grip.
Lane Brown
The Decomposition of Rotten Tomatoes

IN 2018, A MOVIE-PUBLICITY company called Bunker 15 took on a new project: Ophelia, a feminist retelling of Hamlet starring Daisy Ridley. Critics who had seen early screenings had published 13 reviews, seven of them negative, which translated to a score of 46 percent on the all-important aggregation site Rotten Tomatoes-a disappointing outcome for a film with prestige aspirations and no domestic distributor. ¶ But just because the "Tomatometer" says a title is "rotten"-scoring below 60 percent-it doesn't need to stay that way. Bunker 15 went to work. While most film-PR companies aim to get the attention of critics from top publications, Bunker 15 takes a more bottom-up approach, recruiting obscure, often self-published critics who are nevertheless part of the pool tracked by Rotten Tomatoes. In another break from standard practice, several critics say, Bunker 15 pays them $50 or more for each review. (These payments are not typically disclosed, and Rotten Tomatoes says it prohibits "reviewing based on a financial incentive.")

In October of that year, an employee of the company emailed a prospective reviewer about Ophelia: "It's a Sundance film and the feeling is that it's been treated a bit harshly by some critics (I'm sure skyhigh expectations were the culprit) so the teams involved feel like it would benefit from more input from different critics."

This story is from the September 11 - 24, 2023 edition of New York magazine.

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This story is from the September 11 - 24, 2023 edition of New York magazine.

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