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Many people in the film and tech industries scratched their heads when movie studio Warner Bros. acquired film directory and critic app Flixster. It made a little bit more sense when Warner said that Flixster would be the primary driver of its UltraViolet offerings, but people were not sure what to expect from a so-called new and improved Flixster when Warner integrated it into its plans.

The product is now out. It is called Flixster Collections and it is a desktop application intended to be movie aficionados' everything - directory, film and show information (like IMDb), social sharing channel, viewing habit and history aggregator, new content explorer and download center. It is certainly an ambitious undertaking by Warner. The problem with Flixster Collections beta is that it is a cumbersome and probably unnecessary addition as a desktop application.

Warner Bros. Home Entertainment Group announced an agreement today to acquire Flixster, a popular movie discovery application company that includes review site Rotten Tomatoes. Warner Bros. said in the announcement that it will utilize Flixster to launch initiatives designed to grow digital content ownership.

What does this mean for Flixster? Warner says that Flixster and Rotten Tomatoes will both remain completely independent. Flixster will be getting into content distribution through Warner Bros., a big leap in scope and functionality for a company that provides applications and access to reviews. Warner says that it will tie Flixster in with its announced "Digital Everywhere" application designed to organize and access consumers' digital libraries from any device.

Flixster just announced that it has acquired Rotten Tomatoes, the popular movie review site, from IGN Entertainment. IGN is a division of Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation. Flixster is one of the world's most popular movie communities and currently features about 2.3 billion ratings and reviews from its users. Rumors about this acquisition surfaced in late December, when Kara Swisher first reported that a potential acquisition of Flixster by MySpace would hinge upon a merger of Rotten Tomatoes and Flixster, though Swisher's sources later argued that the deal would look exactly like the agreement the two companies announced today.