Rotten Tomatoes is introducing a new “elevated” audience review score for TV shows and films, promising to scrutinize user review scores as much as critic reviews.
The name of the newly minted audience score is Verified Hot. According to Rotten Tomatoes, the audience score metric will assist moviegoers with finding films coveted by critics and audiences alike.
“But how does a film become Verified Hot?” Rotten Tomatoes wrote in the staff-penned blog. “In order to qualify, it has to earn a Verified Audience Score of 90% or higher on the Popcornmeter and meet a set of eligibility requirements, which you can read about here,” with a link to the RT “about” page that explains the criteria in more detail.
Verified Hot – We’re introducing an elevated designation for movies with the highest Verified Audience Scores. https://t.co/tKJMyctdST
— Rotten Tomatoes (@RottenTomatoes) August 21, 2024
Toward the end of the blog, Rotten Tomatoes detailed a list of 200 Verified Hot films. Among them are recently released romps like Twisters, Bad Boys: Ride or Die, and Deadpool & Wolverine.
Although Rotten Tomatoes presented the new audience score metric as a new shorthand means of finding films and shows that audiences like, it also addresses the site’s ongoing issue of review bombing campaigns—the most recent example being the canceled Disney+ Star Wars prequel series, The Acolyte. The Acolyte‘s alleged review bombing campaign wound up resulting in the wrongful review bombing of a 2008 horror film called Acolytes, according to GameRant. Hopefully, Rotten Tomatoes’ newfound rating system will remind fans to keep definitive articles and possessive bounds in mind before posting a heated review.
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