Rotten Tomatoes About To Give Its International Sites The Chop?

Seems there’s a good chance that the Australian and UK versions of Rotten Tomatoes, a leading film review site and community, might be about to get the chop.

Encore Magazine was reporting (before they were asked to take the story down) that Editor of the Australian version, Luke Goodsell, “sent an email out to industry contacts today saying that the Australian site is “currently undergoing changes as the US management decide upon the best course for their international business”.

That seems like another way of saying “Get ready for some bad news, team”.

Australia and the UK are the only two Rotten Tomato sites outside of the main .com version. I’ve always appreciated the fact they’ve run a local version here in Australia, even if it seemed a little strange to run a separate site for such a small market.

Obviously nothing has been decided yet, but it would be a shame to see such a well-known Internet property yank its local team and a local version from our shores. Then again, you can hardly blame new owners Flixster, who acquired the business from NewsCorp in January, for wanting to cut costs out of their business.

Should be interesting to see how this plays out not only for the Australian, but also for the UK, version.