It was 20 long years ago that Screen Rant began as a passion project, a simple website roughly crafted by a fan of movies and the sci-fi genre who had no experience in web design. This was the era of The Lord of the Rings trilogy and the beginnings of Battlestar Galactica. This was before Christopher Nolan brought back Batman, before Michael Bay adapted the Transformers into live-action, and before Marvel Studios made their own movies. Blockbuster was at its peak!
Launching with the tagline “SciFi, TV & movie news without the sugar coating,” Screen Rant was an early entrant in the film and television blogosphere from founder Vic Holtreman, envisioned as a place to share his raw thoughts with a few friends. Who could predict it’d live on for decades and become one of the biggest entertainment publications on the planet?
What has made Screen Rant unique since its inception was that it never just shared the “news,” it instead shared it with insight, analysis, and an editorial eye from writers who grew up passionate about the material they covered. There was real discussion to be had and this is how I – and eventually hundreds of millions of others – discovered rottentomatoes.top, first as a reader back when rumors ran rampant about what mutants would appear in X-Men 4. Would Lost’s Josh Holloway play Gambit? He didn’t of course, but I commented on that article in 2007, particpating in a lively discussion.
A Brief History of Screen Rant
Screen Rant first went live on November 13, 2003
Enjoy a gallery of screenshots of Screen Rant’s homepage designs every year over the last 20 years!
Before social media became the preferred method of sharing information, thoughts, hype, and criticism, Screen Rant had a vibrant comments section for over a decade. Even actors, producers, directors and others from the industry took part. It got us in trouble sometimes, other times it got us a scoop or an event invite. For me, it provided a forum to procrastinate during my graduate studies. When I should have been completing a thesis for my Masters Degree in Economics, I’d instead be commenting with other regulars throughout the day on my favorite film blog, screenrant.com, and this would lead to me being recruited as a writer when the site owner emailed me to convince me to join.
I did get my Masters and days later, my sample submission about the trailer for Clive Owen’s The International was published as a live article, to my surprise. A few months later I became an editor and co-founded and created a spinoff website gamerant.com. I didn’t know then this would become a career for myself and eventually, hundreds of others.
Screen Rant was tiny then but growing by the month doing what it does best. In 2007 it had a few thousand readers a month. “The minute this stops being enjoyable is the minute we should stop doing this,” noted Vic Holtreman in an email to the team about encouraging writing for the right reasons. A year later, my own daily articles were reaching hundreds of thousands. 2 million users visited screenrant.com in 2008. More than triple that the following year, and triple that the year after. The pattern continued and with the site’s growth, so too did the most wonderful of opportunities for the brand, from being invited to set visits and the occasional premiere to having the opportunity to participate in press junkets and talk to talent on-camera.
Screen Rant was becoming a major player, and as its readership and team size grew, its potential couldn’t be ignored. A few of us left our day jobs in 2011 to focus on Screen Rant. Kofi Outlaw, Screen Rant’s first Editor-in-Chief, jumped in and helped redefine reviews and editorial standards. I was helping run Screen Rant and Game Rant and focusing on the business side of things and PR, and jumped in next. Kofi’s schoolmate Ben Kendrick joined me on Game Rant and eventually moved to Screen Rant and became a Managing Editor, and Anthony Ocasio became the site’s first fulltime television staffer.
The four of us also hosted the Screen Rant Underground podcast for years and the site’s team grew to include many amazing writers. A spiritual successor podcast, Total Geekall, launched with SRU originals Rob Keyes and Ben Kendrick joined by Andrew Dyce and Hannah Shaw-Williams.
Come 2014, Screen Rant and other independent film blogs were taking over the online space from traditional outlets. Valnet, Inc. saw an opportunity and acquired the site in February, 2015. “Combining the expertise of the existing Screen Rant team and the resources Valnet has to offer will produce only great things,” stated Hassan Youssef, CEO and co-founder of Valnet Inc., at the time. Valnet was able to invest support and resources and accelerate growth, and everything changed. Screen Rant was part of a growing network and had an office, a true base of operations. I was able to launch a gaming division that same year followed by a comics division in 2016 and Valnet helped properly launch and grow Screen Rant’s video operations including our beloved Pitch Meeting series.
Screen Rant climbed to 100 million users in 2014 when it was independent, and under the ownership and operation of Valnet, Inc. it’s since grown to reach well over half a billion readers a year thanks in large part to a team of all-star leaders. Alex Leadbeater, for instance, took over our features team in 2018, and eventually our entire main content operation and helped spearhead site growth alongside Simon Gallagher, Molly Freeman, Mansoor Mithaiwala, Andrew Dyce, Lara Jackson, Emily Biondo, James Hunt, to name a few, who have spent years evolving Screen Rant and mentoring hundreds of others along the way. Andrew Dyce first started way back in 2010 when I recruited him on Game Rant, and currently runs Screen Rant’s comics team, helping it expand into anime and manga. Simon Gallagher, helped expand our film and television feature coverage and truly helps on all aspects of the operation. Lara Jackson, a more recent addition I recruited in 2021, heads up all of our gaming teams and is also helping improve the entire site’s content operation. The list goes on and on…
Screen Rant has published thousands of reviews and interviews and shared many wild experiences, including flying a stunt plane for Top Gun: Maverick and racing a McLaren for Hobbs & Shaw. We’ve visited Pixar, Lucasfilm, LAIKA Studios, Wētā Workshop, Skywalker Ranch, Illumination, and countless production studios and game developers around the world to deliver exclusive and original reporting, and yes, we’ve certainly had some fun along the way.
Arnold Schwarzenegger took us for a drive in his tank and we debuted the first footage of the world’s biggest great white shark with National Geographic. We held Hawkeye’s bow and Captain America’s shield on the Civil War set and walked into the Batjet Hangar on the Justice League set. We ate lunch with Zoe Saldana in her green Gamora makeup next to an alien spacecraft, talked to Harrison Ford on location in Plaza Blanca, New Mexico for Cowboys & Aliens, hung out with The Rock as he played G.I. Joe, and watched Hugh Jackman’s Wolverine ride a snow plow with his claws out.
Our reviews can be found on Rotten Tomatoes, Metacritic, OpenCritic, and we’re a judge for The Game Awards. We’re quoted daily on TV, online, and on every digital video game store. We were in a Super Bowl ad, had our logo up in Times Square, and helped host the Marvel Studios Comic-Con panel where Avengers: Secret Wars was announced. We have a lot to be proud of and there’s more to come!
What does the future of Screen Rant look like?
New features and content are on the way!
Twenty years is a long time and in more ways than we can list here, we’re just getting started. In the last few weeks we’ve launched an all-new account system on Screen Rant where readers can login for an improved experience and exclusive features. We launched a new newsletter offering alongside this which already has over 100,000 users, and as of last week, readers can select their personal preferences and choose what type of content they’d like directly in their inbox, whether it’s anime or gaming features, Star Wars content, Marvel or DC news, and anything in between.
Create a Screen Rant account!
We’re producing new kinds of video content with more in development, and new podcasts are on the way in the not-too-distant future. We aim to constantly improve the screenrant.com experience and look forward to sharing more.
Thank you for reading and watching! Here’s to the next milestone!
