Is the New York Times Really Buying Letterboxd? The Reported $330 Million Deal, Why A24 and Sony Lost, What Could Change for Your Diary and Ratings, and Why I’m Cautiously Optimistic

Letterboxd is a strange company to be worth $330 million. It doesn’t stream a single movie and it doesn’t make one. What it has is something no studio can manufacture: a very large crowd of people who log what they watch, argue over the difference between three and three-and-a-half stars, and treat a review of a three-hour documentary as a sport.

That is why Thursday’s news landed the way it did. The New York Times reported on Nov. 5 that The New York Times Company has entered exclusive negotiations to buy the site for roughly $330 million, citing two people familiar with the talks. After reading the coverage from TheWrap, Variety, IndieWire, CBC News and TechCrunch side by side, I came away more hopeful than I expected to be, with a few worries I’ll spell out below.

The deal sheet: what has actually been reported

Here is everything that’s on the record, in one place. Every line comes from the outlets listed at the bottom of this story, and the Times’ own report is the origin of all of it.

Is it final? Why the headlines disagree

If you skimmed the coverage you saw three different temperatures. IndieWire’s headline said Letterboxd is “finalizing” a sale. Some other headlines said “advanced talks.” TheWrap, CBC and TechCrunch stuck to “exclusive talks” and repeated the Times’ own warning that negotiations could still collapse.

The careful reading is the cooler one. Exclusive negotiations usually means the seller has agreed to talk to one buyer for a stretch while the final terms get worked out. That is a strong signal and a long way past a rumor, but it is not a signature. Until the companies announce an agreement, “reportedly” is the right word, and I’m using it on purpose.

The money, in four numbers

EBITDA is a rough measure of a company’s operating profit before interest, taxes and some accounting charges. Paying about 22 times it is what a buyer does when it is betting on growth rather than today’s profit. It also means the Times is not buying Letterboxd for what it earns this year. It is buying what it could become.

The 2023 comparison is my own arithmetic from Variety’s reporting: $330 million divided by $50–60 million is roughly five and a half to six and a half times. Even allowing for the fact that valuations in a competitive sale process tend to run generous, that is a steep climb in about three years for a site that is free to use and charges for extras.

Why would a news company pay it? The reports point to the Times’ stated goal of 15 million subscribers by the end of 2027 and its search for advertising revenue beyond news. How exactly Letterboxd would help with the subscriber goal is my read, not something the Times has said, and the reports don’t say it will push anyone toward a news subscription.

Who lost, and how I rank the owners

The most interesting part of this story isn’t who won. It’s who didn’t. Variety reported in September that the Times and A24 were among the bidders, and that Netflix, Sony Pictures Entertainment, Skydance, the private-equity firm TPG and Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian had also shown interest. IndieWire says the finalists were Sony and A24, and TechCrunch, citing the Times, says A24 was priced out.

I think that outcome matters more than the price. A ratings site is only useful if people believe nobody has a thumb on the scale, and a studio owning the place where its own movies get rated is a hard thing to feel relaxed about, even if it never touched a single score. So here is my ranking of the three contenders by how much each would make users wonder about the ratings.

1. The Times: least likely to raise eyebrows

   A publisher doesn’t release the movies that get rated. The catch is that the Times has its own film critics, so the line between its reviews and the community’s ratings has to stay obvious.

2. A24: great taste, real conflict

   A studio with a devoted fan base owning the site where its fans rate its movies. I don’t think A24 would rig anything. The problem is that users would wonder, and wondering is enough to damage a ratings site.

3. Sony Pictures: the biggest overlap

   IndieWire notes Sony has been on a buying spree with cinephile brands like Alamo Drafthouse Cinemas and Cosm. A major studio owning the ratings is the setup I would worry about most.

This is my opinion about perception and conflict of interest. It is not a judgment on which company runs its business better, and nothing here suggests any of them would have altered a score.

What changes for your account, and what nobody has said

If you only want to know whether your diary, your lists and your four-star reviews are safe, this is the section. The short version: nothing has been announced, and what has been reported is mostly reassuring.

One small thing about the audience size, since you’ll see it quoted: it isn’t settled. One industry roundup puts Letterboxd at about 26 million users, No Film School says around 30 million, and AV Club says nearly 35 million by the end of October. The outlets are measuring slightly different things, so I’d treat any single number as a ballpark.

My diary entry for the deal

Since this is a story about a diary site, I scored the deal the way I would a movie. Five entries, my stars, my reasons.

Star ratings are my opinion about the reported deal, not data. They judge what has been reported so far, not a transaction that hasn’t happened.

My take: the product is trust, not traffic

Think about why anyone opens Letterboxd. You want to know whether a movie is worth your Saturday night, and you want the answer from people who love movies as much as you do. The average rating is useful only as long as you believe nobody has leaned on it. Millions of strangers agreeing is the whole product.

That is why I’m more relaxed about a newspaper company than I would have been about a studio. The Times isn’t neutral about movies, since it employs critics and publishes its own lists, including the 100 best TV shows ranking I wrote about. But its business is selling trust in its judgment, and that points in a healthier direction than owning a slate of films.

Here is what I’m hoping for, and I’ll be clear that it’s a hope and not a forecast: that a company that understands subscriptions leaves a free community alone and builds a better paid tier around it, rather than a wall. Here is what I’m afraid of: communities rarely die dramatically. They sand down. A banner here, a prompt there, a feed that slowly starts to care about someone else’s goals.

And there’s one thing I find genuinely charming. A site founded in 2011 by Matthew Buchanan and Karl von Randow, built on a very simple idea, keep a diary of the movies you watch, is about to be priced like a media company. That’s a little wild. It’s also a nice reminder that people will pay serious money for a place where other people care about movies as much as they do.

What I would keep an eye on if it closes

You don’t need to take anyone’s word for how this goes. If the deal is signed, these are things any member can check for themselves:

• Whether ratings, reviews and sorting look and behave the way they do today.
• What the free version includes compared with the paid membership, and whether either changes.
• Where the first ads show up, if there are any, and how clearly they are labeled.
• Any updates to the privacy policy or terms of use.
• Whether the founders are still the ones running the site, as reported.

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