The Scoop
The controlling investor in Letterboxd, the social platform for movie lovers that’s one of the few success stories in 2020s digital media, is looking to sell its stake in a company that plays a powerful and growing role in the global film business.
The Canadian holding company Tiny has spoken to potential buyers, from CNBC and MS NOW parent company Versant to the Hollywood startup The Ankler, about the platform, which plays host to a community of millions of movie buffs and has turned into an entertainment media player that produces videos and licenses films.
Tiny approached The Ankler in 2025, and when they couldn’t agree on sales terms, instead pursued a series of events, newsletters, and a sales partnership. The investment bank Liontree is now marketing the deal.
Letterboxd’s founders did not respond to multiple requests for comment. In an email, Tiny co-founder Andrew Wilkinson declined to comment.
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Tiny’s search for a new owner of Letterboxd comes at a key moment: It’s poised to evolve from a niche community site into a potentially significant entertainment media player, should it opt to become one.
The site, founded in 2011 in New Zealand, operated for years as a passion project for diehard movie fans, who used it primarily to log, rate, and discuss movies. That changed in 2020, when the coronavirus pandemic forced people inside and online, leading to a spike in streaming viewership — and a concurrent rise in discussion on Letterboxd. In just a few years, the company surged from around a million users in 2020 to more than 26 million users earlier this year, according to filings. The company has boasted that most of its users are young, between the ages of 18 and 34.
The growth caught the attention of Tiny, a Canadian holding company listed in Toronto that also owns the DJ software brand Serato and the coffee device maker AeroPress. In 2023, Tiny purchased 60% of the “Goodreads for movies,” valuing it at $50 million. The new owners promised to preserve Letterboxd’s quirky independence, keeping its original founders onboard while helping it expand.
Some Letterboxd users, who feared the new owner would commercialize the site, viewed the sale with suspicion. But over the last three years, the company has made few noticeable changes. Letterboxd beefed up its display advertising, and rolled out a streaming rental business for obscure or hard-to-find films.
Other previously announced initiatives remain unrealized. In its 2023 announcement, Tiny said Letterboxd would move into television reviews, a potential huge new pool of content, but the expansion remains largely unfinished.
Tiny now seems to see an opportunity to make a profit cashing out. While Tiny does not break out Letterboxd financials, in disclosures released earlier this month, the company cited the website as one of the major drivers of growth in its venture fund last year.
Max’s view
Letterboxd is one of the rare independent digital platforms to defy the trends of 2020s media and continue to grow. The sale presents an opportunity for a potential acquirer, particularly one with a media background.
The site has a twee, old-internet feel. It has not been optimized to show users content from people they don’t follow; its primary feed, a non-algorithmic list of activity from friends, is more like 2000s Facebook than any major platform today. Letterboxd’s site remains confusing to navigate and its app isn’t much better. Letterboxd videos have the feel of 2000s Entertainment Tonight press junket content, with stars sitting for brief interviews in front of promotional material.
It is also one of the few new platforms that have cultivated passionate, prominent followers who seem to be using it for fun, rather than to explicitly sell products. Charli XCX’s Letterboxd became incredibly popular once users realized she was on the platform logging old horror movies and cult favorites. The rapper Jack Harlow burnished his artsy bona fides by logging slightly more interesting picks than expected. (Semafor’s David Weigel also has an underground Letterboxd following.)
But despite its user growth, Letterboxd currently is undermonetized relative to its entertainment media peers. It relies heavily on display and programmatic advertising, which tends to drive lower revenue than glossier sponsorship deals. The company has only dabbled in events, and could use its audience to build a consumer or professional events business. And beyond its brief partnership with The Ankler last year, it has not cracked the lucrative “For Your Consideration” advertising business that powers much of Hollywood’s trade media.
Its content arm is similarly underdeveloped relative to the company’s large reach. While it isn’t as popular as the Criterion Collection’s video series, Letterboxd’s Four Favorites is a popular YouTube franchise that the company could expand and scale. Letterboxd could also steal a page from A24’s popular movie podcast, in which famous Hollywood personalities interview actors and directors involved in the studio’s movies and TV shows. It could also build out more content around its subscription product, which currently allows users small perks like the ability to customize their profiles and view advanced analytics on their reviews.
The View From Letterboxd
The Letterboxd founders seem keenly aware of the potential for alienating their users — just read their extremely long About Us page, which explains most features and decisions made by the company in detail. Diehard movie fans, the founders seem to intuit, are also famously sensitive and can recoil at change. Mubi users canceled the arthouse movie streaming service’s subscriptions en masse over one of its investors’ ties to Israel’s war efforts. Conservative movie fans were upset by the all-women reboot of Ghostbusters. Letterboxd co-founder Matthew Buchanan retains veto rights over any potential buyer, a condition intended to preserve the site’s original spirit.
Notable
- Despite some recent improvements in its balance sheet, Tiny’s stock has declined since it acquired Letterboxd, and selling the site could help the holding company manage its debt. Tiny bought Letterboxd through its separate venture fund, a signal to some observers at the time that Tiny had planned to turn around the purchase faster than some of the companies it owns in its regular portfolio.
- A Letterboxd spokesperson told The Guardian late last year that Letterboxd is “less a social media platform, more a community.” The language mirrors the strategy implemented by Twitch, whose CEO, Dan Clancy, described his streaming video platform similarly at Semafor World Economy.