Letterboxd could be the next addition to the New York Times bundle, with a reported $330 million deal said to be on the table

Brace yourselves, cinephiles: the place where you log every movie you watch, rank your favorites, and passive-aggressively rate your friends’ picks might be getting a new owner. According to a New York Times report, the Times Company is in exclusive negotiations to acquire Letterboxd. The reported price tag is around $330 million.

The sources are anonymous since the talks are confidential, so nothing is final. The deal could still collapse, and neither the Times nor Letterboxd co-founder Matthew Buchanan has commented publicly. But exclusive negotiations are a pretty big step past “we’re just looking.”

If you’ve ever spiraled into a 2 a.m. rabbit hole of other people’s hyper-specific Letterboxd lists, you already know why this is a big deal. The site has become the hangout for movie obsessives, with a reported 30 million users reviewing films, building hyper-specific lists, and taking on viewing challenges. The deal would also fit neatly into the Times Company’s long-running campaign to become less a newspaper and more a lifestyle subscription.

Who else wanted Letterboxd?

Letterboxd, which launched in 2011, has reportedly been working with investment bank LionTree to find a buyer, and the guest list for this party was stacked. Film studios A24 and Sony were both reportedly interested. A24 even pledged to give the founders independence and leave the business model alone, which sounds like exactly what you’d want to hear if you were nervous about a studio buying the site where people review its movies. But the price kept climbing, and A24 reportedly got priced out.

Letterboxd is projected to bring in roughly $15 million in earnings this year, which puts the reported price at more than 20 times that figure. That’s a hefty premium for a site that mostly runs on people’s love of rewatching Challengers and cooking up one-liners they can then post on X. But Letterboxd runs on both subscriptions and ads, just like the Times, and that overlap is clearly part of the appeal.

What this means for the Times’ growing empire

If the name sounds like a pattern, it is. The Times has already spent hundreds of millions on The Athletic, Wirecutter, and Wordle, all stacked into one big subscription package. Letterboxd would add a whole new pocket of passionate, extremely online fans to that lineup.

There’s also a subscriber goal at play. The Times currently has 13.8 million subscribers and wants to hit 15 million by the end of 2027. Letterboxd doesn’t say how many people pay for its premium tiers, but a loyal, paying fan base is just what that target needs.

Will Letterboxd change?

For now, the signs point to “not much.” Sources say the Times has discussed keeping co-founders Buchanan and Karl von Randow in charge, reporting to a Times executive. Letterboxd would likely keep running as its own standalone site for the foreseeable future, though the Times reportedly plans to plug its ad tech into the platform.

Letterboxd’s value rests on something no acquisition price can guarantee: the trust of 30 million people who treat it as their own corner of the internet. The Times has a record of buying beloved properties and folding them into a bundle, and promises of independence tend to be tested after the deal closes, not before. Nothing is signed, and neither side has commented publicly. But if the talks succeed, the question won’t be whether the Times can afford Letterboxd. It will be whether Letterboxd’s community still recognizes the site once the Times owns it.

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