Letterboxd, the social media app and website for movie lovers, seems to be closing in on a sale. According to the New York Times, the website has several suitors, including Sony Pictures Entertainment, A24, and the Times itself. According to sources, the deal would value Letterboxd at more than $300 million, roughly 20 times its projected earnings of around $15 million this year. Seems a bit steep, but what do I know?
Several years ago, the Canadian holding company Tiny acquired a 60% stake in Letterboxd, with co-founders Matthew Buchanan and Karl von Randow owning the remaining 40% share. Rumours of a Letterboxd sale began to emerge earlier this year when it was reported that Paramount Skydance, Netflix, and others were interested in acquiring it.
The thought of Letterboxd falling under the control of a studio has obviously left some fans a little worried about a potential conflict of interest. Would Sony, Paramount, A24, or Netflix go out of its way to favour its own movies?
Matthew Buchanan and Karl von Randow launched a private version of the website in 2011, but it didn’t really take off until the pandemic. In 2020, the site had a member count of around 1.8 million. By the next year, it had grown to 3 million and continued to grow, reaching over 30 million members by July 2026.
The site is free to use, but it does offer paid subscriptions (Pro and Patron tiers), which include additional features such as ad-free browsing, individual user statistics, and more.
It also launched the Letterboxd Video Store last year, which allows members to rent movies without signing up for a subscription service or needing to get past a paywall. The store offers a rotating selection of curated titles based on data from member watchlists, ratings, and reviews. There are also unreleased festival films and little-seen titles that can be hard to track down on other platforms. “We program these shelves using millions of watchlists, reviews and other secret sauce signals,” read the announcement. “It’s like walking into your local video store and seeing the “employee picks” shelf—and those employees are countless Letterboxd members across the globe.“
It seems that Letterboxd will be sold at some point; it’s just a matter of who will acquire it…