Fandango, best known for its movie-ticketing service, is entering the licensing business.

The NBCUniversal-owned company in April will launch Fandango Fanshop, an online service that will sell a mix of third-party and directly licensed products including t-shirts, hats and other apparel, prop replicas, collectibles. Fanshop, which will be operated by Fandango, also will offer special promotions, with prizes such as visits to film sets.

The service will start with merchandise tied to a handful of movies — Disney-Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2; Warner Bros.’ Wonder Woman; and Universal-Illumination’s Despicable Me 3.

In many cases, products will be packaged with an option for buying a movie ticket or downloading a film from the FandangoNow video streaming service. The film social media site Flixster, which Fandango purchased from Warner Bros. last year, also will be linked to Fanshop. Fandango’s movie ratings/news website Rotten Tomatoes operates independently of Fanshop, says Fandango Head of Marketing Adam Rockmore.

Rockmore tells us that Fanshop “will have some products that are definitely unique and exclusive to us,” whether via DTR agreements or as exclusives or from existing licensees. “This will be very much about curation and focus. We are not trying to be a mass merchant. We really want this to be tied into the fandom and the activation we are trying to do around the movie tickets that we sell.”

While Fanshop will sell merchandise, “our ultimate goal will be get people to go watch movies at the theater and immersed in the franchise,” Rockmore says. For the time being, licensing will fall under Rockmore; Fandango will work with film studios’ consumer products groups in seeking merchandise for Fanshop.

Fanshop’s launch will cap a several-year effort by Fandango to extend its business beyond film-ticketing. In addition to the acquisition of M Go (now known as FandangoNow) and Flixster, Fandango bought Brazil online ticketer Ingresso.com in December 2015 and added Peru’s Cinepapya a year later, adding business in Mexico, Argentina, Colombia, Peru, Ecuador and Bolivia. For the time being, Fanshop will remain limited to the U.S., says Rockmore.

“We started out adding the components to build out the ecosystem and we wanted to have those transactional and fan engagement hubs, so Fanshop was a natural extension,” says Rockmore. The strategy is coming together [via] what we developed ourselves and what we have acquired.”