Vudu is Fandango at Home by NBCUniversal's Comcast and Warner Bros. Discovery

Vudu’s name is changing to “Fandango at Home”

It really just flows right off the tongue, doesn’t it?

The Verge

Chris Welsch reminds us of the important branding legacy here:

After many years of operation under Walmart, Vudu was purchased by Fandango in 2020. There haven’t been many obvious changes to the service since then; this rebranding is easily the biggest. Fandango shut down its previous FandangoNOW service when it scooped up Vudu, so perhaps it’s not a surprise that the company ultimately wanted its own name back in there. (It had already stuck “Fandango” beneath Vudu in the app’s logo.)

So, Walmart's Vudu became Fandango's Vudu which replaced FandangoNOW but now Vudu Fandango is becoming Fandango at Home.

But it's actually even slightly more crazy than that because Vudu actually started out in the mid-2000s selling a set-top box called, yes, 'Vudu Box'.¹ It was one of the earliest streaming boxes, focusing on high quality streams, but that space quickly became crowded so it pivoted into its software, launching 'Vudu Apps'. iTunes doing movie downloads cut that off rather quickly and so that's when Vudu sold to Walmart.² I'll let Wikipedia take it from here:

In April 2020, it was announced that NBCUniversal subsidiary Fandango Media would acquire Vudu for an undisclosed amount; the sale closed on July 6, 2020. Fandango is minority owned by Warner Bros., and operates the similar service FandangoNOW. As part of the sale, Walmart will maintain its relationships with Vudu, including account integration and promotion of the service via Walmart's website.

On August 3, 2021, FandangoNOW was merged into Vudu, with Vudu replacing FandangoNOW as the official video store on the Roku platform. Fandango chose to retain the "Vudu" name as it was the larger service with a loyal customer base.

In June 2023, AMC Theatres announced that Vudu would subsume its AMC Theatres On Demand service, with its library being transferred to the platform and upgraded to higher quality formats where applicable. Users would be able to migrate to Vudu through August 31, 2023.

In February 2024, Fandango announced that Vudu would be renamed Fandango at Home.

What a cast of characters and brands in there. This also skips over when Vudu partnered with the even more disastrously branded UltraViolet streaming movie initiative. Only to then also join the decidedly better branded (and still alive) competitor, Movies Anywhere.

Anyway, if I'm following all of this correctly, Comcast (which owns NBCUniversal) and Warner Bros. Discovery (which owns Warner Bros.) now are offering Fandango at Home as a streaming video service under their Fandango subsidiary. But this is separate from Peacock, Comcast's other streaming service. And Xfinity Stream, Comcast's other, other streaming service. Also separate from Max, Warner Bros. Discovery's other streaming service. And also Discovery+, Warner Bros. Discovery's other, other streaming service.

At least 'Vudu' was a short brand! Though, Wikipedia requires the disclaimer at the top of its page:

Not to be confused with Voodoo.

¹ And it was a venture-backed startup then, started by one of the early members of the Mac team at Apple.

² And had to shut down their streaming porn section to make that happen.