Fandango buys Vudu from Walmart: Here's what happens to your library

After months of rumors about a potential acquisition, Walmart has announced that its Vudu digital video platform has been acquired by Fandango. The Vudu team published a brief statement about the matter on its blog, saying that Fandango will take over the platform and that there will be more details to announce in the future. At this time, though, Vudu has revealed what existing customers can expect under this acquisition.

Vudu is a digital video service used to sell, rent, and, in some cases, stream for free a variety of movies and TV shows. The platform joins others like Amazon Prime in offering early access to a number of big titles, but it never quite reached the same level of popularity as better known alternatives.

Reports over the past several months have claimed that Walmart was looking for a company to acquire Vudu, though at one point the reports indicated that talks had ended and that Walmart, at least for a time, planned to hang on to the service.

We've seen some updates roll out to it since, the most recent being the addition of a Lists feature and the ability to 'undo' movie rentals within the first half-hour of streaming. It seems that talks about an acquisition were still happening behind closed doors and that the company was ultimately purchased by Fandango, a movie ticket seller that also has a FandangoNOW movie streaming platform.

In its brief announcement about the business deal, Vudu said that its customers will retain access to their library of content and that 'nothing about the Vudu experience is changing.' The Vudu apps will remain live on all of the devices they're available on, hinting that Fandango may not plan to merge the Vudu platform with its FandangoNOW service.