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Moviefone
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Moviefone is an American-based movie listing and information service. Moviegoers can obtain local showtimes, theater information, film reviews, or advance tickets. The service is available nationwide in many but not all area codes, and is owned by AOL.
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In 1989, Russ Leatherman, Rob Gukeisen, Andrew Jarecki, and Adam Slutsky launched the interactive telephone service, with initial service in New York City and Los Angeles. After gaining popularity, it later expanded across the United States and eventually adopted an online presence as Moviefone.com. In 1999, Moviefone was purchased by AOL for more than $400 million. In 2004, MovieTickets.com acquired outright the online arm of Moviefone.com, after having entered in a partnership in 2001 that crosslinked their ticketing offerings.[1] Today, Moviefone continues as a service of AOL and remains a popular movie information guide in America, bringing movie information and advance tickets to nearly 5 million moviegoers a week.
Russ Leatherman is the voice of Mr. Moviefone, known for his trademark greeting, “Hello and Welcome to Moviefone!” The greeting has been parodied on programs including The Simpsons, Saturday Night Live, Late Night with Conan O’Brien, the 2005 Academy Awards, VH1’s I Love the 90s, Fair Game, and was the subject of a Seinfeld episode. The Pointy-Haired Boss from Dilbert uses Moviefone to check on his stock.
As a movie critic, Leatherman's reviews have been on CNN, CNN Headline News, ABC-TV, CBS's The Early Show, Fox News, MSNBC, NPR, the nationally syndicated The Daily Buzz morning show, and heard on a number of top radio stations nationwide including Z100 in New York, KRTH-FM in Los Angeles and the nationally syndicated Westwood One, USA Radio Network, and ABC Radio Network.
Leatherman has appeared on national talk shows such as The Late Show with David Letterman, The Oprah Winfrey Show, The Ellen DeGeneres Show, The Howard Stern Show, The Caroline Rhea Show and others. He has also been profiled in the pages of Time Magazine, People, Entertainment Weekly, Life, Vanity Fair and The New York Times.
Russ was the co-founder of the Moviefone company in 1989 and became the voice of the character "Mr. Moviefone" from the start. Russ is a former University of Odaho college DJ (where he received his degree in Television and Radio) and uses an over-the-top, "Dick Clark on crack" spin when acting as Mr. Moviefone. He has recorded well over 3,000,000 voice prompts for the Moviefone service since 1989.