A24, Sony and The New York Times Are Bidding Over $300 Million for Letterboxd

Letterboxd, the easygoing corner of the internet where movie fans log what they watched and argue over four-star ratings, has turned into one of the hottest properties in media right now. Majority owner Tiny is fielding formal bids of more than $300 million from A24, Sony Pictures Entertainment and The New York Times Company, with one of the bankers running the sale calling the film-tracking app “a phenomenon.”

From Niche Diary App to $300 Million Prize

Letterboxd launched out of Auckland, New Zealand, in 2011, built by Matthew Buchanan and Karl von Randow as a place to log and rate the movies you watch, part diary, part social network for cinephiles. It stayed a scrappy passion project for years before growth took off, going from about 1.8 million members in 2020 to over 30 million by mid-2026, roughly 43 percent growth year over year. Canadian holding company Tiny bought a 60 percent stake back in 2023 for a little over $50 million. Three years later, with the app projected to bring in roughly $15 million in 2026 earnings, bidders are reportedly valuing that same stake at north of $300 million, about 20 times projected earnings.

A Crowded Field of Suitors

The New York Times Company, A24 and Sony Pictures Entertainment have all submitted serious offers, according to reports. They are not the only names that have circled the app this year. Netflix, Paramount Skydance and private equity firms TPG and RedBird Capital reportedly explored a deal earlier in the summer, alongside Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian. Paramount Skydance has its hands full elsewhere at the moment, still working to close its own $110 billion Warner Bros. Discovery takeover after settling the antitrust fight that had frozen it for months. Investment bank LionTree is running the Letterboxd sale process, and no winner has been announced yet.

Letterboxd started as a scrappy New Zealand passion project in 2011 and now counts more than 30 million members worldwide.

Why a Movie Diary App Is Worth So Much

Letterboxd’s appeal goes well beyond star ratings and year-end lists. The app has built an active, high-profile fanbase, filmmakers including Francis Ford Coppola and Rian Johnson keep their own logs, and its list and review culture has become a genuine marketing force ahead of theatrical releases. It runs on a freemium model, with Pro and Patron subscriptions priced between $19 and $49 a year, and it launched its own indie film rental storefront in December 2025. Media analyst Ken Doctor described the platform as “the gold standard of the internet,” the kind of engaged, trusted audience any media company would want to own outright.

Can Letterboxd Stay Itself After a Sale?

Not everyone is thrilled about the prospect of a studio or a publisher owning the platform outright. A24 is seen as the most “on-brand” buyer, but both A24 and Sony have been flagged as potential conflicts of interest, since a review site controlled by a movie studio raises obvious questions about how it might cover, or promote, that studio’s own releases. The New York Times is generally viewed as the more neutral option of the three. Earlier this year, a Boston-based Letterboxd user named Elizabeth Joyce set up a public benefit corporation to try to buy Tiny’s stake herself and keep the platform independent, later crowdfunding legal and due-diligence costs from the wider community. For now, Letterboxd itself is staying quiet on specifics, repeating the same line it gave when sale rumors first surfaced: “As Letterboxd has grown, it’s natural there will be interest in what we do next.”

With LionTree still fielding offers and no deadline publicly set, it could be weeks before Letterboxd’s 30 million members find out who ends up running their favorite film diary next.

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Picture Source: Letterboxd