IFH 802: Studios, Scores & Secrets: The Untold Story of Rotten Tomatoes with Patrick Lee

When the lights of the cinema dim and the hum of anticipation fills the air, something magical happens—stories come alive. And sometimes, the stories behind the storytellers are the most fascinating of all. On today's episode, we welcome Patrick Lee, a man whose quiet curiosity and geeky love for film statistics helped shape the very lens through which millions of people now view cinema. Patrick Lee is the co-founder of Rotten Tomatoes, a website that has become both a cultural barometer and a battleground for filmmakers and fans alike.Before Rotten Tomatoes became a household name, Patrick and his co-founders were merely tinkering with design and entertainment tech, creating websites for giants like Disney Channel and MTV. But like many innovative ideas, Rotten Tomatoes was born from a simple question: "What if people could see all the movie reviews—good and bad—in one place?" It was their creative director, Sen Duong, who initiated the project, running it as a side hustle until it became clear they were onto something far bigger than banner ads and online games.The journey wasn’t smooth sailing. As Patrick explained, the film industry often has a conflicted relationship with Rotten Tomatoes. Studios love it when their movies are Certified Fresh but curse its very existence when the Tomato Meter goes south. “We’ve had studios threaten to pull ad campaigns or never advertise with us again,” Patrick revealed. It's a fine balance between journalistic integrity and business pragmatism, and it’s one that Rotten Tomatoes walked with surprising grace—largely thanks to the team’s belief in transparency and fairness.

What’s remarkable is how this digital compass evolved into a kind of cinematic moral authority. “The Tomato Meter is basically the percent chance that you’ll like seeing a movie,” Patrick said. And therein lies its charm—it doesn’t claim objectivity. It’s not about whether a film is “good” in a vacuum. It’s about consensus. It’s about probability. It’s about knowing whether you, dear viewer, are likely to leave the theater with a full heart or an empty wallet.Patrick also took us down a rabbit hole of changing critic landscapes. When Rotten Tomatoes began, the idea of a “professional critic” was easy to define: newspaper columnists, magazine reviewers, or syndicated television film buffs. Today, in an age of TikTok reviews and substack essays, that boundary has blurred. “Anybody can start a podcast or a YouTube channel,” he observed, echoing the democratization of media that defines our era. But for Rotten Tomatoes, quality still trumps quantity, and validation still requires rigorous standards.Perhaps one of the most unexpected parts of the conversation veered toward China, where Patrick spent nearly a decade after selling Rotten Tomatoes. There, he witnessed first-hand the explosive rise of filmgoing culture. “Even for some random movie, theaters were sold out for hours,” he noted. With state-of-the-art theaters rising from dusty streets and censorship shaping storylines, China has become both a new frontier and a mirror reflecting global shifts in entertainment priorities.

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