CinemaScore says Martin Scorsese's criticism is wrong

After Martin Scorsese slammed Cinemascore and RottenTomatoes for "devaluing" cinema, Harold Mintz of CinemaScore sent my colleagues at The Playlist his own rebuttal.

“To begin, it’s important that it’s understood that CinemaScore should not be looped with Rotten Tomatoes. CinemaScore’s inception was to poll opening night moviegoers to let others who don’t attend opening night know if the film is worth their hard earned money,” says the email. “To loop CinemaScore with a critic based service (Rotten Tomatoes) shows that Mr. Scorsese has no understanding of what CinemaScore represents.”

Mintz goes on to defend the random people that are chosen every week to rate a movie as “the most enthusiastic group for a movie. If they don’t like the movie, that opinion gets filtered down to those who are willing to wait a week or two to see it,” continues Mintz. “CinemaScore polls the audience that MOST want to see it… The data is deadly accurate. It correlates to box-office as well. To bury those results as Mr. Scorsese wishes to suggest only says that he doesn’t want his fans to let others know whether or not his latest film meets expectations.”

“It confuses me as to why Martin Scorsese wants to censor his fans from voicing their opinions. I can understand his concerns with Rotten Tomatoes because their opinions get released BEFORE the movie gets released which could cause the problem he’s most concerned about,” explains Mintz.

He concludes by saying that Scorsese’s “attack against CinemaScore is simply unjustified.”

I too was taken aback by Scorsese mentioning CinemaScore in his rant last week - Regardless, CinemaScore isn't wrong in defending themselves the way they did.