Warner Bros. Readies Online Movie Service

By adding Flixster and Rotten Tomatoes to its assets, the studio is set to launch a cloud-based digital movies app.

Warner Bros.' purchase of Flixster, a social media app for films, and Rotten Tomatoes, the movie-review aggregator, lays the framework for the studio to start selling and streaming films online. Warner Bros. will launch a new service this year called UltraViolet that will let users buy movies and store them online, or in “the cloud,” meaning they can access their films on any device, anywhere. The UltraViolet project has the backing of most major U.S. movie studios, with the notable exception of Disney. The service is expected to help film sales following consecutive years of declining DVD sales.