Fandango chooses Vudu as the way forward for its streaming business

Fandango has announced that it will phase out the branding of its “FandangoNOW” streaming service and focus on Vudu as its lone app for rentals and purchases of movies and TV shows. The change means that Vudu will now become the default portal for rentals and purchases on many Roku devices, where FandangoNOW has long been the digital store for movies and TV content.

Fandango says the united service will “offer more than 200,000 new release and catalog movies and TV shows to rent or buy, including the largest collection of 4K UHD titles and thousands of titles to watch for free — all with no subscription required.” It’ll also continue to support Movies Anywhere and the high-quality video streams that made Vudu popular among home theater enthusiasts.

“By bringing its two services together on Vudu, Fandango will be able to rapidly innovate and make bolder, faster enhancements to benefit consumers and partners, especially important during an ever-changing media landscape,” Fandango said in today’s press release. “Vudu’s size, reach and breadth of content, paired with Fandango’s scale in theatrical ticketing, will provide even more opportunities for studios, brands and marketers to reach a massive high value entertainment audience.”

FandangoNOW customers can transition their accounts to Vudu beginning today. After that, their movie and TV show libraries will be provided through Vudu. The switchover from FandangoNOW to Vudu on Roku home screens should happen automatically. That prominent placement could be huge for the service. (Fandango goes out of its way to mention that Vudu supports Roku Pay for checkout.) The Vudu app icon is getting a little busier with the rebranding and will now have “— Fandango —” beneath it, like so:

Image: Fandango

Walmart sold Vudu to Fandango last year for an undisclosed sum. Though Fandango is best known to many people for its movie ticket sales, it has a large digital network that includes Rotten Tomatoes, Flixster, and Movieclips; the company says the latter is the number one movie trailers channel on YouTube. Vudu has helped push along streaming video with high-bitrate streams combined with early and comprehensive support for Dolby Vision, Movies Anywhere, and unique programs like “disc to digital.”