Fandango Steps Into Film Distribution With Faith-Based Event Film 'House of Worship'
Fandango, the company millions of cinemagoers know as a ticket-buying app, is now distributing its first film. "House of Worship," a faith-based event film featuring 25 popular Christian music artists, opened at roughly 400 theatres across the United States, according to Deadline.
The film is the visible front of a broader strategy. Fandango's parent division, Versant Media — which houses most of the cable networks formerly under NBCUniversal — is pushing the brand beyond movie ticketing and into content ownership and distribution. Jerramy Hainline, Versant Media's EVP of Digital Platforms & Ventures, told Deadline that when he started at the Golf business, 85% of its revenue came from the cable channel; that split has since moved to 50/50. The same diversification logic now sits behind Fandango's move into film.
Fandango plans to run "House of Worship" through its own entertainment ecosystem: a theatrical run first, then Premium VOD (rentals at a higher price point closer to release), TVOD (transactional rentals and purchases), AVOD (ad-supported free streaming), and a long-term library berth. That pipeline exists because of a 2024 acquisition: Fandango absorbed the streaming and VOD service formerly known as Vudu, which Comcast had bought in 2020. In July of this year, the rebranded "Fandango at Home" dropped the "at Home" suffix entirely, unifying its digital storefront and ticketing operation under the singular Fandango name.
The "House of Worship" album arrived in January, with both the album and the film executive produced by Darlene Zschech and Michael W. Smith — two of the most recognised names in contemporary worship music. The film features those two alongside CeCe Winans and other leading figures in the genre. Paul Mabury and John Hartley produced; Elliott Eicheldinger directed. Fandango brought the film to theatres in partnership with The Fuel Music, a faith-focused label and media company, per a press release carried by the Democrat and Chronicle.
Fandango is not reporting box-office grosses for the film. That is unusual for a theatrical release of this scale, and it leaves the commercial performance of the company's first distribution title outside the public tracking system that the industry relies on.
This is not Fandango's first time putting non-traditional content into cinemas. The company has previously orchestrated theatrical releases of WWE events, the Winter Olympics, a Spanish-language FIFA World Cup presentation with Telemundo, and "Love Island USA." Those were event screenings built on existing rights. "House of Worship" is something different: Fandango as distributor, controlling the windowing — the sequence in which a film moves from theatres to home viewing platforms — across its own infrastructure.
For context, Fandango launched in 2000 as a joint venture of major US theatre chains and venture capital firms. Comcast acquired it in 2007. Warner Bros Discovery holds a minority stake. The Rotten Tomatoes app, another Fandango property, is currently available in Canada, the UK and Ireland. What makes "House of Worship" worth watching is not the film itself — that is somebody else's review — but the chain of decisions behind it: a ticketing company using its own screens, its own streaming shelf and its own brand to move a film from theatrical to library without an outside distributor in between.
