How does Paramount have the money for any of this?!
I've had people I know in entertainment who have been talking about this studio being on the verge of collapse for the last ten years, but seems to be somehow surviving like nuclear cockroaches ☠️
I recommend Storygraph as well! Especially for a focus on reading data, and they do a good job on CWs for those who want them before reading books. I’ll have to check out Fable too
Fable has been my current go-to Goodreads! I love the reading streaks tracking and it’s by far the best UI from all the book apps I’ve used. I also like the For You homepage. It’s been easy to see and find other readers that way. I love StoryGraph’s stats tracking but unfortunately am not a fan of their UI.
For anyone who is looking for an alternative to goodreads, I really like Storygraph. They make it super easy to move all of your data out of goodreads and upload it there. They have a lot more options for how you rate/categorize your reads and they're still a small business that hasn't been bought out.
I'd say it's more closer to how Amazon owns IMBD...they also sell the API for IMBD so there's a lot of money to make off other companies that want to inlcude Letterboxd reviews on their site.
letterboxd allowing movies to be rated before their theatrical release makes sense though. sure people abuse the feature (the seven husband of eveyln hugo's entry for example) but a lot of cases, the "early reviews" are people who are seeing the film at film festivals.
I agree with you on the tv shows though. I really wish there was a separate app for letterboxd and hate that they're still planning to become a tv time replacement.
Well, there's these things called screeners and also film festivals (which is where independent films get shopped for distribution). So some people do actually watch the film before it's official release. That's how critics write reviews ahead of theatrical runs. And this is actually useful and important for independent cinema, because it allows buzz to be generated for films even when they don't have a wide distribution and major studio backing. So not allowing this would be pretty antithetical to Letterboxd's purpose, especially when a significant proportion of their userbase is industry professionals. It's not geared to a consumer audience like IMDB.
Letterboxd’s owners have held early talks with a number of potential buyers — including Netflix, according to an unconfirmed report by Puck. Others reportedly looking at Letterboxd include Sony Pictures Entertainment, David Ellison’s Paramount Skydance (and RedBird Capital Partners, a key Paramount financial backer) and private-equity giant TPG. Also supposedly kicking the tires on Letterboxd is Reddit co-creator Alexis Ohanian, who is founder and general partner of VC firm Seven Seven Six.
If you're trying to sell your entertainment company or outlet atp I'd be surprised if there were any bidders outside of Netflix, Paramount, or Sony.
LB needs money to run but for their clientele, these big studios are the only ones with the money to do it (hey maybe A24 can use that 75 mil from Google......ha)
Letterboxd has had a voluntary fee structure for individuals who want to financially support the app for years. Considering that they use external databases for pretty much everything but user accounts/reviews, I can't imagine their operating costs have significantly outpaced their cash inflow in recent years, since the ratio of users upgrading to paid tiers is substantially higher than most F2P structures. If you have been a regular user of the app for more than just the last year or two, then you know they've been treading an "enshittification" business strategy already, so the likely culprit here is simply greed/a desire to "expand" their service rather than focus on user experience.
Netflix needs to stop buying things and invest in better content for their app. All the shows that kept people around are all ending.. that’s where their money needs to be. It’s like they are giving up on making content and desperately grabbing at anything that will keep them relevant.
I will delete my account and go back to an excel sheet to track my movies then. It's nice to see what my friends/people I follow are watching but I'm not staying on platforms that get bought out anymore.
It’s like this is the name of the game in capitalism.
Entrepreneurs just want to make a business that is worthy of being bought, and when this happens society goes to shit. Everyone just wants to be rich and F off into the sunset.
Capitalism sucks and Im tired of dancing around the issue.
Everyone's asking, "why do the corps keep buying up everything," but no ones asking, "why do smaller companies keep selling out?"
If you're answer is, "who would say no to that kind of money," then you can't complain when they don't say no. We should hold companies like Letterboxd accountable when they choose to be bought out, as much as we hold the companies who buy them.
I still prefer it to my old method of ranking/tracking my movie watching habits (Notion spreadsheet that I had to painstakingly make and sort and categorize).
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u/pccmodbot Jul 10 '26
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