Rotten Apples Is Like Rotten Tomatoes with a Post-Weinstein Twist

In this biblical wreck of a year, no plague seems more constant than the ongoing sexual misconduct accusations in Hollywood. Every other day brings grotesque new claims about a powerful person allegedly abusing their post, which has given way to a much-needed reckoning throughout the industry. Though it’s difficult to keep track of the never-ending flow of headlines, one site is making it easier for movie and TV fans to wade through the morass. Meet Rotten Apples.

The site, which launched earlier this week and quickly went viral, is essentially an online database that pinpoints which films and TV shows are associated with people who have been accused of sexual misconduct. Type a title into its clean, user-friendly interface, and Rotten Apples will instantly tell you whether a given film is “fresh” or “rotten.” If it’s rotten, it’ll highlight the names of people involved in the project who have been accused of sexual misconduct, and will include a link to a credible report about that person.

For example: search for any major movie associated with Miramax or the Weinstein Company, and you’ll be directed to this New Yorker story about Harvey Weinstein, who has been accused of sexual misconduct by dozens of women (he has denied the claims).

The site isn’t perfect, mostly because it can hardly keep up with the ongoing revelations that keep cropping up. Mere hours ago, documentary filmmaker Morgan Spurlockconfessed that he has been accused of rape and sexual harassment. As of now, his film Supersize Me is still fresh on Rotten Apples, a rating that will surely soon change.

The site is the brainchild of Tal Wagman,Annie Johnston,Justice Erolin, and Bekah Nutt, four Los Angeles-based advertising professionals. They conceived it in the thick of the Weinstein controversy in October, when bombshell reports were being dropped at a furious clip. Wagman, an associate creative director and writer, says they were discussing the scandal when they realized it would be useful to have an IMDb–esque resource that could help moviegoers keep track of the figures with allegations against them.

“I think the tool serves as a commentary on how pervasive the problem is,” Johnston, the site’s creative director, tells Vanity Fair. “We’re trying to empower people with information.”

Ideally, it could serve as a resource that also keeps alleged abusers in check, Wagman notes—because if there’s anything we’ve learned from this reckoning, it’s that Hollywood previously had precious few checks and balances to stop people from abusing their power.

To create the site, the team of four looped into an online database that has “all relevant movies and television shows,” Erolin says, including the names of at least 19,000 actors, actresses, producers, directors, and more. They spent about 15 hours doing research on a medley of accusations in order to supplement the data with credible resources, then merged the two datasets together. Voilà, Rotten Apples was born. It was launched on Monday, then quickly swept across the Internet.

“The first day, we had about 2,000 unique users,” Erolin says. “Tuesday, it bumped up to about 38,000. Today, we’re on track to hit 100,000 unique users . . . out of those 100,000 users, we have about half a million searches.”

“I didn’t even know that,” Wagman responds with a laugh.

They’ve also already received several e-mails, tweets, and more from users feeding them new information and suggesting various corrections. As of now, they fund the site themselves, and want to ward off any concerns that they created it in order to capitalize and cash in on a topical issue. “That’s not our intention,” Nutt says firmly.

“We are not putting any advertising on it—even though we’re in the advertising industry,” Erolin says with a laugh. “We’re not making money off of this. If anything, we’re paying to put this up because it’s our own hosting servers that we‘re using for this.”

“It’s painful, so it’s been really interesting and maybe even a little cathartic to just sort of put this together and put it out there and just have it be a resource,” Nutt adds.

If there is one silver lining to this ongoing catastrophe, it’s that not all movies and TV shows are tainted—though it certainly feels that way sometimes. When Erolin went through the data, he discovered that only about 23 percent of searches show up as rotten, while 77 percent show up as fresh. Though the numbers might fluctuate, and new allegations are surfacing every other day, it is a balm to know that not everything you once loved is corrupt.

“Most importantly,” Wagman adds, “Lady Bird is fresh.”

Get Vanity Fair’s HWD NewsletterSign up for essential industry and award news from Hollywood.Full ScreenPhotos:Photos: Jordan Peele and Greta Gerwig Flip the ScriptYohana DestaYohana Desta is a Hollywood writer for VanityFair.com.

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