Letterboxd Is Up for Sale, and A24, Sony and the New York Times Are Bidding

https://www.worldofreel.com/blog/2026/9/24/letterboxd-is-up-for-sale-and-a24-sony-and-the-new-york-times-bidding

Comments

reticulatesSep 25, 2026, 9:21 PM
I continue to be baffled by this sale. Letterboxd was acquired by Tiny 3 years ago, Tiny’s entire premise is that they hold for the long term. Selling after 3 years is not long term. I don’t understand why Tiny would undermine their raison d’etre unless it’s because the founders (who retain a minority stake) are pushing for it.

Tiny just recently updated their website to emphasize how long they’ve owned each property which is especially confusing given they’re now offloading things https://tiny.com/companies/letterboxd

“Tiny's model — long-term ownership, founder autonomy, no pressure to flip the company in three to five years — fit naturally.”

…?

GrombobulousSep 25, 2026, 9:44 PM
I imagine that in life and business there’s no such thing as a decision that is never regrettable. I guess it just didn’t work out.
dtagamesSep 26, 2026, 2:21 AM
Three years is long term in the tech and VC world.

At a $300M sale, the project achieved its goal and it's time to exit.

OzzyBSep 25, 2026, 9:27 PM
so you _believed_ them -- that is the only takeaway from this.
UqWBcuFx6NV4rSep 25, 2026, 10:30 PM
The much more pertinent point is that it is counter to their apparent track record.
simulator5gSep 26, 2026, 4:12 AM
Investment firms are apparently not immune to enshittification
rdmuserSep 25, 2026, 8:31 PM
Having such a high profile film rating site be potentially owned by a film studio has serious conflict of interest issues. Same goes for amazon buying imdb and they've already used that to adjust scores for at least one film they released because of bad reviews. I'm happy to see this get some attention here after my submission didn't because the potential implications of this purchase are big.

Edit: I believe I made an error re the claim imdb changed the score of at least one amazon owned film. See replies for more info. Apologies!

aucisson_masqueSep 25, 2026, 9:27 PM
> Same goes for amazon buying imdb and they've already used that to adjust scores for at least one film they released

Any source on that ? I found nothing serious, just reddit and Facebook post. No one serious is reporting on it.

rdmuserSep 25, 2026, 9:55 PM
Ah actually unfortunately I think I made a mistake there so I apologize for that. Should have double checked instead of speaking from memory. I believe I was thinking of The Little Mermaid change but it seems like that wasn't their film. Sorry!

https://www.avclub.com/the-little-mermaid-imdb-changes-ratin...

UqWBcuFx6NV4rSep 25, 2026, 10:31 PM
> Should have double checked instead of speaking from memory.

Claude :)

rdmuserSep 25, 2026, 11:31 PM
Oh is that a claude thing? Definitively a false positive in this case and I don't care much for ai in general. Pretty damn awkward that I might need to memorize ai text styles even though I don't use them so I don't accidentally write the same way as one of them.
madeofpalkSep 25, 2026, 9:52 PM
The problem with Amazon owning IMDB, or A24 potentially owning Letterboxd, is not that they would screw with it, but that every move they make will be put through that lease. Even with NYT being the owners I’m sure there would be the regular ‘drama’ of whatever woke/anti-woke influence they may have over it.
dtagamesSep 26, 2026, 2:23 AM
The corollary is that when the product gets this big and this good (it's terrific), someone is going to buy it.

It's a sign that the developers built a product with demand.

Computer0Sep 25, 2026, 8:17 PM
I use https://movielens.org/ and it is ran by the University of Minnesota.
PyWoodySep 25, 2026, 9:28 PM
This looks almost too good to be true! Thank you for sharing. I'm going to migrate my 600+ library over tonight.
clayhacksSep 25, 2026, 8:19 PM
Is there an ATproto or activity pub version of letterboxd? I like A24, but not sure how much I trust Sony or the NYT to run it reasonably
rurbanSep 25, 2026, 8:41 PM
A24 is the biggest cheater on Letterboxd, buying 5 star raters en masse. Warner is not much better. Sony is ok.
madeofpalkSep 25, 2026, 9:21 PM
What 5 start ratings have they purchased?
rurbanSep 26, 2026, 6:38 AM
Hundreds. Basically all the films they submit to a major festival.
Slow_HandSep 26, 2026, 12:14 AM
Source?
rurbanSep 26, 2026, 6:36 AM
My research in doing http://cannes-ratings.org The cheat detection logic is not public, but reliable
lentil_soupSep 26, 2026, 7:07 AM
Can you expand on this? I don't understand what you mean. You're saying they buy people to vote on the letterboxd?
rurbanSep 26, 2026, 8:22 AM
Exactly. There are dozens of people giving only 5 stars to a certain companies films.
rurbanSep 26, 2026, 8:33 AM
And after 10 years of this going on, they finally did something against it. Unfortunately the wrong thing. They don't show pre-screening ratings anymore, amassing the cheater ratings then to the public on the Premiere day. Pretty hard to catch them this way. They should catch and block them before.

imdb had the very same problem before, but nobody trusts imdb ratings anyway.

metacritic and rotten-tomatoes don't need cheaters en masse, they just need to pay one or two popular "influencers".

r721Sep 26, 2026, 1:10 PM
RateYourMusic has a great algorithm I think - they assign rating weights to users depending on how their rating distribution looks like, so anybody who rates everything with 5/5 would have zero weight.

https://rateyourmusic.com/wiki/RYM:Weighting+FAQ

zoenolanSep 25, 2026, 8:42 PM
https://popfeed.social/ on ATproto
DarkNova6Sep 25, 2026, 8:23 PM
Amazing. So Imdb 2.0 has become Imdb 2.0.
ChrisArchitectSep 25, 2026, 8:40 PM
Referenced NYT piece (unlocked): https://www.nytimes.com/2026/09/24/business/media/letterboxd...

Related background on the state of growth there from a few months ago:

The Rise and (Potential) Fall of Letterboxd

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48463894

mpalmerSep 25, 2026, 8:32 PM
Truly, everything good gets milked dry for someone's exit. I know that's usually celebrated in a forum like this, but is it possible things are just a bit out of balance?
hotsaladSep 25, 2026, 9:05 PM
Heh, the name makes it sound like a daemon.

service letterboxd enable; service letterboxd start

thrownaway561Sep 25, 2026, 8:47 PM
so glad I move over to TMDB the other day. Letterboxd layout is the worst.
535188B17C93743Sep 25, 2026, 8:20 PM
Can't wait for the enshittification of Letterboxd.

Dear God, don't let Amazon do what it did to Goodreads here.

crossroadsguySep 26, 2026, 5:54 AM
It has happened. Wait isn't necessary.
dgellowSep 25, 2026, 9:10 PM
Damn, that asking price is insane
kkotakSep 25, 2026, 9:29 PM
Why not $3B? or $30B, even?
kennywinkerSep 25, 2026, 10:08 PM
America hasn’t had real antitrust law for >40 years. It should be impossible for a review site to be purchased by a company that makes things reviewed on that site. Reagan era neoliberalism defanged antitrust, and brought on the corpo-hellscape we live in today.
sajithdilshanSep 25, 2026, 9:03 PM
If it's bought by A24 or Sony that's absolutely gonna be a conflict on interest and I cannot imagine the platform would ever be impartial for the reviews of their movies. It NYT buys it, then it would be turned into a woke nonsense project. I guess all good things must come to an end.
nimihSep 25, 2026, 9:14 PM
part of the charm of letterboxd is that its median reviewer is far more woke than every NYT contributor combined, imo.