$330 million play: The New York Times sets sights on Letterboxd
Letterboxd may be changing hands after a splashy offer—curious who’s making the play and how much is on the line?
Under the terms being discussed, Letterboxd would keep its two co-founders — Matthew Buchanan and Karl von Randow — in charge, with the pair reporting to a New York Times executive, according to The New York Times. The talks are exclusive and the price on the table is about $330 million, but nothing’s signed yet.
If it closes, the movie- logging platform would join the Times’ growing roster of consumer brands — The Athletic, Wirecutter and Wordle among them — and bring along a fiercely active community the company says numbers around 30 million film fans worldwide.
How we got here
- 2011 — Letterboxd launches as a social diary for movies.
- 2023 — Canadian investment firm Tiny buys a 60% stake at a roughly $50–$60 million valuation.
- September 2026 — Variety reports multiple bidders circling, including A24 and the Times; A24 later bows out as the price climbs, per the Times.
- November 2026 — The New York Times reports it has entered exclusive negotiations to buy Letterboxd for around $330 million.
The reported price is more than 20 times Letterboxd’s roughly $15 million in earnings projected for 2026, per the Times — a breathtaking jump from Tiny’s 2023 deal. Music and media analyst Dan Runcie summed up the math in a post on X.
“Letterboxd is in talks to be acquired by The New York Times for $330M. At $15M earnings, that's a 22x multiple. Tiny bought Letterboxd in Sep 2023 for reported $50-60M. That's a 5-6x valuation increase in 3 years.”
The TV question
Even as buyout chatter builds, Letterboxd is wrestling with its next evolution. In early July, the company said on X that television tracking is in development — news that arrived just as rival app TV Time confirmed it would shut down on July 15. The timing set off a wave of speculation that TV Time users could flood in and reshape the vibe.
Some longtime members worry that episode-by-episode logging could drown out Letterboxd’s oddball cinephile culture — the one that fuels lists like “Movies That Feel Like a Fever Dream” and obsesses over deep cuts such as Pink Flamingos, Gummo, The Iron Rose and 964 Pinocchio. For now, the TV features are still being built, and the Times deal remains in negotiation.