According to Variety, the New York Times Company is in exclusive negotiations to acquire Letterboxd, the movie-rating site, for roughly $330 million, with the co-founders expected to stay on and report to a Times executive. The deal is not final. The site, per Variety, has been "shopping itself" to interested parties for months.
Three hundred and thirty million. Reuters ran it as a business story, which is the right frame: this is a newspaper buying a diary.
The Times already owns Wordle, Wirecutter, and The Athletic. Look at that list again. A game. A product review site. A sports subscription. Every property on it is a habit with a meter. Your movie list was the last free diary on the internet, and it just got an exit interview.
Do the math, because the PR machine doesn't. Letterboxd projects about $15 million in 2026 earnings. The price is 20 times that. In 2023 a Canadian holding company bought a 60 percent stake at a $50 to $60 million valuation. Three years later the asking price is $330 million. The entire gain was the internet noticing that 30 million people log their obsessions in a spreadsheet, and the Times deciding to own the spreadsheet.
A24 was in the bidding, promised independence, and dropped out when the price rose. The only buyer left with a checkbook and an editor-in-chief turns everything into a subscription.
You rated that one-star documentary in 2019. The star was a data point. It always was.
YOUR TURN: is your Letterboxd list a diary or a product? Answer honestly. We both know the answer.
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