The auction for Letterboxd, the film-diary app that has become the internet's most influential clubhouse for movie obsessives, is now a crowded one. This week, Variety and The Hollywood Reporter both reported that A24 and The New York Times Company have submitted second-round bids for the platform, in a sale that could value the company at more than $300 million.
That price would be roughly 20 times Letterboxd's projected 2026 earnings, reported at about $15 million. The company, which lets members log, rate and review the films they watch, has grown to more than 30 million registered users worldwide, a base skewed toward the Gen Z and millennial audiences that legacy media companies have struggled to reach on their own.
Canadian holding company Tiny owns roughly 60% of Letterboxd, a stake it bought in 2023 in a deal that valued the whole company at just $50 million to $60 million. Co-founders Matthew Buchanan and Karl von Randow hold the remaining 40%. Tiny has quietly shopped the business before: it explored a sale to Versant and The Ankler back in April without reaching terms, according to TheWrap.
A Crowded Field
A24 and the Times are not the only names circling. Netflix, Sony Pictures Entertainment, Paramount Skydance, private equity firm TPG and Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian have all been reported at various points as having explored a deal, underscoring how a niche social network built by two New Zealanders in 2011 has become an unlikely prize across film, streaming and publishing. For the Times, which has built subscription products around games, cooking and product recommendations, a film community with a devoted, younger audience would extend a strategy of acquiring habits that keep readers paying for something beyond the daily news report.
Neither side has confirmed a deal is close. An A24 spokesperson, asked about the reports, gave TheWrap a standard non-denial:
The Company regularly reviews potential investments, and it's our policy not to comment on speculation about potential acquisitions or divestitures.
A24 spokesperson, statement to TheWrap
A Letterboxd representative similarly declined to confirm details, saying only that any decision about the company's future would involve its founders.
Why It Matters
The scale of interest says as much about the industry's anxieties as it does about Letterboxd itself. Studios have watched the app become an unofficial marketing engine during awards season and a real-time barometer of word-of-mouth for smaller releases that no longer get reviewed by shrinking newsroom film desks. A24, in particular, has built its brand around the kind of cinephile community Letterboxd has organized digitally, which is part of why its presence among the bidders reads as more than a financial play.
Much of that value has been built on features that turned casual movie-logging into a social habit: yearly wrapped-style recaps, personalized "four favorites" profile grids, and a paid Letterboxd Pro tier that adds recommendations and detailed statistics. Studios and streamers have increasingly treated the app's reviews and list-making culture as a leading indicator of how a specialty release will perform once it leaves the festival circuit, giving Letterboxd an outsized voice for a company its size.
No closing timeline has been reported, and any deal would still need to satisfy Tiny's board and the founders, who have said publicly that they intend to stay involved in whatever comes next. But with multiple well-capitalized suitors now through a second round of bidding — spanning an independent studio, a newspaper company, a streamer and at least two private equity firms — a company that looked like a scrappy side project for film nerds fifteen years ago is being valued, at least on paper, alongside far larger media properties.
For now, the deal remains a subject of trade-press reporting rather than an announced transaction, and the price could still move in either direction as diligence continues. What is already clear is that the winner will inherit both a devoted audience and the pressure of not disrupting the thing that made the app valuable in the first place: a community that built itself without much corporate help.
