Warner Brothers has made a deal to buy Flixster. The takeover will use the site’s movie discovery service and overall technical experience to push its Digital Everywhere initiative, which will eventually provide a “studio-agnostic” way of finding, loading, and managing their media collections regardless of where they are. Flixster would run independently and keep Rotten Tomatoes at arm’s length from Warner to avoid bias towards the studio.
Digital Everywhere along with the more universal UltraViolet standard are both parts of a Warner Bros. attempt to make its content available in as many areas as possible and to ease the problems of moving from device to device, or even from store to store. At least UV will let viewers who own permanent rights watch it on any device or service that supports the same locker system.
Flixster already has apps for Android, iOS, and other platforms, but it’s not clear if these will end up tying into any of Warner Bros.’ services in the future.
