It started with an argument. My best friend and I couldn’t agree on which website to trust for movie reviews, and somewhere in that argument I asked the obvious question: why can’t we just average everything?

So I looked behind the curtain. Turns out most of the big rating sites are owned by companies with a real incentive to make sure the movie looks good. IMDb is owned by Amazon. Rotten Tomatoes is owned by Fandango — a ticketing company that profits when you buy the ticket. Metacritic is owned by Fandom. The “objective” scores everyone trusts have a stake in whether you like the answer.

Four months and countless sleepless nights later, The Verdict exists. With a dog as the CEO.

He has no stake in the game, other than belly rubs and treats. That’s the whole point. No stock in a streaming service, no cut of ticket sales, no marketing team whispering in his ear. He’s the most trustworthy CEO I could think of, mostly because he’s incapable of being bought.

Every score on The Verdict is pulled directly from the platforms themselves — IMDb, Rotten Tomatoes, Metacritic, Letterboxd, and more, depending on the category. We don’t estimate, we don’t guess, and we don’t average in a number just to make something look better. If a title is brand new and the platforms haven’t caught up yet, we say so — you’ll see an “early verdict” note instead of a number pretending to be more confident than it is. As more reviews come in, the score updates automatically.

We built The Verdict Files specifically to show our work here — the actual, documented ownership structures behind the platforms you use every day, and the titles where the numbers get suspiciously generous. We’re not asking you to take our word for it. We’re showing you the receipts.

The Verdict isn’t just a place to check scores anymore. You can build a room — a space that holds what you’ve actually watched, read, and played, with Marty giving you his honest read on your taste. Public rooms live in Verdict City, a whole skyline of other people’s rooms you can wander through, buzz, and visit. It’s still growing. So are we.