First came the report in the paper itself: The New York Times Company has entered exclusive negotiations to buy Letterboxd, the film diary and social network for cinephiles, for about $330 million.
The number is remarkable because it fits so badly with a media acquisition. Letterboxd is projected to earn about $15 million this year, which makes the price roughly 22 times earnings — for a company whose users pay nothing and whose money comes from a subscription tier for extra features.
What the Times is buying, then, is not content but an audience and a graph. Letterboxd reported 3 million users in January 2021; by April of this year it had 28 million. More than half are under 35. That is precisely the demographic a 174-year-old newspaper most needs, bundled into a product people open voluntarily, daily.
According to the report, the talks have included whether the co-founders would stay in charge while reporting to a Times Company executive. Letterboxd would likely remain standalone for the "foreseeable future," and the Times would integrate its advertising technology. A Times spokesperson declined to comment to its own newspaper; Letterboxd and its current parent, Tiny Ltd., did not immediately respond to requests.
The contest was apparently real. The Times reported that the studios A24 and Sony Pictures Entertainment were also interested, and that A24 was priced out. The figure sits alongside the company's earlier purchases: Wordle for a low seven-figure sum, Wirecutter for slightly more than $30 million, The Athletic for $550 million.
The strategic logic is not hard to see. The Times no longer sells a news subscription so much as a bundle — news, games, cooking, sports, product recommendations. Each of those verticals is a passion people return to on their own initiative. Film was the most conspicuous gap. Letterboxd supplies not only the viewers but an archive of what they have watched, rated and listed: a taste signal no platform algorithm can reconstruct, and one that sells very well to advertisers.
The risk is cultural. Letterboxd users treat the app as a diary, not a feed. It is the place where you do not delete an embarrassing 2016 rating; you defend it. The 2023 sale to Tiny already tested that loyalty. A $330 million price tag, though, creates an expectation of monetization that cannot be permanently reconciled with a quiet, ad-free archive. The fact that the founders are meant to stay is the clearest signal that both sides know how easily this audience can be lost.
The Goodreads comparison is unavoidable, and it is a warning. Goodreads was once a thriving social network for readers until Amazon bought it and largely left it to stagnate. The Times has shown it can integrate acquisitions; The Athletic also shows how expensive and slow that can be. Whether cinephiles will tolerate a newspaper company's ad machinery is the real question behind the $330 million.
