How It Works

• Limited releases are defined as opening in 600 or less theaters at initial release. Platform releases, or movies initially release in fewer than 600 theaters that later expand, are categorized as Wide Release.
• Foreign releases are defined as non-English language films.
• Each critic from our discrete list gets one vote (as determined by their review), all weighted equally.

• In order to be considered for domestic categories, a movie must have 40 or more rated reviews and a television show must have 15 or more.
• A movie must have 500 or more user ratings to be considered for the User category.
• Each movie is eligible in only one genre.
• Reviews without ratings are not counted toward the results of the Golden Tomato Awards.
• Because reviews are continually added, manually and otherwise, we have a cutoff date at which new reviews are not counted toward the Golden Tomato awards. This year's cutoff date is 1/1/2014.
• We use a weighted formula (Bayesian) to account for variation in the number of reviews per movie. The winners are determined by the rankings, designated as the "adjusted score", after applying said formula:
  (R ÷ (R+M) × T + (M ÷ (R+M))) × A, with "R"
  representing the number of rated reviews, "M" the minimum number of reviews needed for a movie to qualify, "T" the Tomatometer score, and "A" the average Tomatometer of all the qualifying movies.