Skip to main content

Fandango buys Vudu because movie theaters are dead (for now)

 

What do you do when you’re a business that derives most of its earning from movie ticket sales, now that the movie theater business has been mothballed for the foreseeable future? If you’re Fandango, the answer is you buy Vudu, a movie streaming service with millions of potential viewers, from its current owner, Walmart.

Recommended Videos

The cost of the Vudu acquisition has not been released, but we do know a fair bit about Vudu itself. Unlike subscription streaming services like Netflix, Amazon Prime Video, or even Disney+, which offer an all-you-can-eat model for a monthly fee, Vudu is a movie rental business that has quietly grown over the years into an impressive streaming platform. It reaches more than 100 million living room devices across the U.S and its mobile app has been downloaded over 14.5 million times, according to TechCrunch.

It has supported 4K, Dolby Vision, and Dolby Atmos since 2015, making it one of the first platforms to do so, a move it followed up in 2017 by adding support for HDR10. As a movie purchase and rental service, Vudu belongs to the Movies Anywhere platform, which gives folks cloud-based access to all of the digital movies they own. It also has an impressive collection of ad-supported free movie rentals that you can stream, with titles like Batman Begins and The Cabin In The Woods.

Fandango already owns FandangoNow, a purchase and rental service it acquired under the name M-Go. On the surface, Vudu and FandangoNow appear to be very similar, but FandangoNow lacks Vudu’s ad-supported collection which will be helpful to expand its reach into new households.

Vudu will continue to power Walmart’s digital movie and TV store on Walmart.com and existing Vudu customers won’t see any changes to their ability to access their purchased movies. Walmart logins and the Walmart wallet will continue to work on Vudu, TechCrunch notes.

Fandango is best known for its movie ticket purchasing service, a line of business that has obviously been severely impacted by the coronavirus pandemic, officially known as COVID-19. The purchase of Vudu is both an expansion of its existing online movie rental business as well as a hedge against what might be a long-term turndown in the movie business. After all, even after theaters resume their normal operations, the pandemic has also affected the studios that create the movies, which adds even greater instability to an already uncertain outlook.

Simon Cohen
Contributing Editor, A/V
Simon Cohen is a contributing editor to Digital Trends' Audio/Video section, where he obsesses over the latest wireless…
3 great free movies to stream this weekend (April 18-20)
Toni Collette with a shocked and fearful expression in Hereditary from A24.

It's only April, but A Minecraft Movie will undoubtedly become one of the highest-grossing films of the year. The Minecraft adaptation has earned over $565 million worldwide in two weeks. Surpassing $1 billion globally is now in play, which would be a monumental win for Warner Bros. Speaking of Warner Bros., Sinners opens this weekend and could reach $50 million domestically.

If you've already bought tickets to see A Minecraft Movie and Sinners, save some money by streaming a film on a free FAST service. While the newest movies remain in theaters, there are plenty of classics to select on these services. This weekend, our recommendations include a baseball comedy, a terrifying horror, and a Jim Carrey staple.

Read more
3 great free movies to stream this weekend (April 11-13)
Four men gather around the stands at a hockey rink.

Two words: chicken jockey. That phrase has swept the nation thanks to the success of A Minecraft Movie. The fantasy comedy movie shattered expectations with over $163 million domestically, the highest-grossing opening weekend for a movie based on a video game. Expect Warner Bros. to greenlight a sequel in no time.

Perhaps chicken jockey isn't your thing. It doesn't have to be! Perhaps you're content with staying home this weekend and watching a movie. If that's the case, save some money and watch a free movie on a FAST service. Start with these three movies: a charming rom-com, a Boston crime thriller, and a family comedy.

Read more
3 great action movies on Tubi you need to watch right now
John David Washington points a gun while on the ground in The Creator.

At this point, Tubi is not just "the free streaming service with ads." It's much more than that due to its well-stocked library of critical and financial hits. For example, Quentin Tarantino's Kill Bill movies are available on Tubi. Not paying a cent to watch Kill Bill should be illegal, but it's completely free with Tubi. Drive, Se7en, Platoon, and Apocalypto are several of the other high-profile selections.
One of Tubi's best genres is action. The page includes action stars like Sylvester Stallone, whose guilty pleasure from 1987 is one of our recommendations. The other two selections are a sci-fi epic with stunning visuals and one of Tom Cruise's better movies of the last 15 years.
We also have guides to the best movies on Netflix, the best movies on Hulu, the best movies on Amazon Prime Video, the best movies on Max, and the best movies on Disney+.
Over the Top (1987)

Over the Top is aptly named because of the exaggerated premise and ridiculous plot. This is a compliment, by the way. Sylvester Stallone plays Lincoln Hawk, a truck driver who pulls in extra cash by arm wrestling. After his estranged wife, Christina (Susan Blakely), becomes ill, Lincoln must pick up his 12-year-old son, Michael (David Mendenhall), and take him on a road trip.

Read more