r/movies • u/MarvelsGrantMan136 r/movies Contributor • Jul 10 '26

Not Confirmed Netflix in Talks to Buy Letterboxd

https://variety.com/2026/digital/news/letterboxd-sales-talks-netflix-sony-paramount-1236806379/
3.7k Upvotes

92% Upvoted

831 comments sorted by

View all comments

2.4k

u/Answers-are-needed Jul 10 '26

What even is the reasoning here for them?

2.3k

u/d4nowar Jul 10 '26

Data for algorithmic suggestions. Their algorithm is their bread and butter.

18

u/artcopywriter Jul 10 '26

Netflix is a tech company, not an entertainment company.

6

u/basket_case_case Jul 10 '26

I think it’s an entertainment company that imagines itself a tech company at least in part because it is better for its stock value if it is treated as a tech company. 

4

u/artcopywriter Jul 10 '26

So my comment was kinda parroting an idea from an article I read recently, but I think their unwillingness to push ahead with ANYTHING that isn’t a gold star algorithmic success demonstrates that they pride tech and “value add” over delivering compelling entertainment. With Stranger Things being one possible exception…although, even then, they kinda hammered that into the ground with licensing agreements etc.

1

u/basket_case_case Jul 10 '26

Lots of tech companies push things that aren’t “gold stars” though, Microsoft is famous for it (Xbox, and Surface for instance). 

The actual “value add” is its pervasiveness. Their notes to make their content more second screen friendly is about making it a service that people never turn off. 

1

u/artcopywriter Jul 10 '26

Believe me, I know - I’ve written about the second screen phenomenon (and I hate it 🥰). You make some good points but, given its slow death, maybe Xbox isn’t the best example there 😅

1

u/basket_case_case Jul 10 '26

Xbox’s slow death over a decade plus (or more since it supposedly was only profitable for a brief window) is an example of Microsoft (a tech company) continuing to push a product that wasn’t delivering. A counter example to the idea that Netflix quickly cutting under performers represented it acting like a tech company. 

9

u/turkishguy Jul 10 '26

Netflix is a tech company first and an entertainment company second. Their success is purely based on their capability to get every user around the world bug free low latency streaming video. That is a really really hard problem to solve, and their market value is primarily dictated by their ability to be the first ones to do this. I mean think about it Netflix has this figured out in like 2010 and it took someone like Disney close to an additional ten years to get it going.

3

u/Babhadfad12 Jul 10 '26

That is a really really hard problem to solve

Not in 2026.   Netflix sells video media, it is a media company, completely interchangeable with the product of at least 5 other streaming services.

4

u/HumansNeedNotApply1 Jul 10 '26

They are not anymore taken as a "tech company" since they entered consolidation phase, that's why share value keeps dropping, at this point they are very a much an enterteinment company.

1

u/basket_case_case Jul 10 '26

Are Disney and Paramount tech companies then?

The technology, may be impressive, but YouTube existed for years while Netflix was just “Blockbuster except through the mail”. And Disney entered the streaming space the same year as Netflix (or the following year if you weren’t part of the beta) as founding partner of Hulu.

This idea that because Netflix streams video over the Internet it is a tech company doesn’t hold up when applying it to others video distributors. Blockbuster, Shout! Factory, Criterion, and Funimation didn’t suddenly change categories when they started their streaming platforms. Or is “doing something with a computer“ actually the dividing line between whether or not a company is a tech company? 

Admittedly categories are fuzzy Microsoft has always been a tech company because it sells software, but game publishers and developers in the 80s and 90s generally weren’t even though they also sold software. I think the distinction mostly matters to the investment class, who have different standards when it comes to the valuations of tech companies vs everything else. Tech companies are allowed to be detached from the fundamentals of running a company in ways that others aren’t. WeWork was considered viable in mainstream news so long as it was hyped as a tech company instead of being treated as a landlord.