A BEGINNER'S GUIDE TO ROTTEN TOMATOES REVIEWS & RATINGS
We’ll help you understand what the tomatoes, popcorn buckets, numbers, percentages, and badges mean by walking you through all the Rotten Tomatoes basics filmmakers should know!
What is the Tomatometer?
The Tomatometer represents the percentage of professional critic reviews that Rotten Tomatoes considers positive. A score of 60% or higher is Fresh, while a score below 60% is Rotten. This is NOT an average rating. This means that a film with 90% Tomatometer does not necessarily have critics giving it 9/10, but that 90% of the counted critic reviews were classified as positive. ONLY reviews from Tomatometer-approved critics and publications contribute to this score.
What does Certified Fresh mean?
Certified Fresh is another designation for highly reviewed movies and TV seasons. This entails:
A Tomatometer of at least 75%
At least 5 reviews from “Top Critics”
A minimum number of reviews depending on the release type:
80 for wide theatrical releases
40 for limited theatrical releases and streaming movies
20 critics for an individual TV season
Films that premiere at festivals also need an announced theatrical rollout date, unless they otherwise meet the wide-release criteria.
WARNING: A title can lose its Certified Fresh designation if its score subsequently falls and remains below 70%!
What about the Popcornmeter?
The Popcornmeter is a measuring stick for audience sentiment rather than critical acclaim. It signifies the percentage of users who give a film or TV show a rating of 3.5 stars or higher.
There are two types of audience views:
“Verified Ratings”: Ratings from users whose ticket purchase is verifiable
“All Audience”: Ratings from users regardless of whether their viewing is verified or not
Rotten Tomatoes currently uses “Hot” for a Popcornmeter of 60% or higher and “Stale” for a score below 60%. For films, the number of audience ratings required for a Popcornmeter to appear varies according to projected domestic box office, with the current threshold ranging from 50 to 500 verified audience ratings.
What does Verified Hot mean?
Verified Hot is an elevated designation for theatrical films with strong verified audience scores.
To qualify, a film will need:
At least a 90% Verified Audience Score
500+ Verified Ratings for a wide release
250+ Verified Ratings for a limited release
A Verified Hot title can consequently lose this designation if its Popcornmeter falls below 80%.
What does the “average” rating mean?
The Tomatometer should not be confused with Rotten Tomatoes’ Average of Rated Reviews! The former tells you the percentage of positive critic reviews, while the latter takes the numerical or letter grades critics actually assigned and converts them to a score out of 10. In other words:
Tomatometer: How many critics liked it?
Average of Rated Reviews: How highly did the critics who gave a rating score it?
How do reviews get on Rotten Tomatoes?
There’s a curation team at Rotten Tomatoes that collects reviews from approved critics and publications, who can also submit their own reviews.
WARNING: This doesn’t mean that you can simply submit any review you receive and have it added to the Tomatometer. The critic or publication does need to meet Rotten Tomatoes’ approval criteria! Reviews must also comply with the Rotten Tomatoes’ Critics Code of Conduct. Among other requirements, critics must link directly to their original review, use a quote directly from that review, and submit only one review per given film, season, or episode.
If your film isn’t listed on Rotten Tomatoes yet, you can request that a missing or incorrect title page be added or updated through Rotten Tomatoes’ Help Desk.