Letterboxd Unveils A Film Online Rental Store

Letterboxd, the cinephile social media platform that has blown up in popularity over the past couple of years, is getting into film distribution with a new TVOD (transactional video-on-demand) service called “Video Store.”

The Big Picture: While platforms like YouTube, Vimeo, Facebook, Instagram, X, and TikTok have all toyed with showing movies and TV on their platforms (with varying degrees of minimal success), Letterboxd could break the curse since it exists exclusively as a platform for cinephiles. It’s essentially merging the community of old Twitter with the film bona fides of The Criterion Channel.

Behind the Scenes: Armed with 20 million users, Letterboxd has the foundation to make a real dent in the indie film space.

• The Video Store will feature themed rental “shelves” that highlight curated selections from film festivals, global cinema, and emerging filmmakers — in other words, anything outside of the mainstream.
• The rentals will be “available either on demand or within timed windows modeled after festival screenings,” per THR.
• The selections will be “informed by user activity and enthusiasm across its site,” so expect movies that spark passionate discussion to get top billing.
• The company says the first slate of titles, the territories they’ll play in, and their release dates will be announced soon.

End Credits: Letterboxd will even explore hosting titles that don’t yet have distribution. Going viral on the platform could turn out to be a crucial avenue for some films to land a distributor… especially if they’re championed by Hollywood talent who have become major influencers on the site, like filmmaker Mike Flanagan (Midnight Mass, Doctor Sleep) and actress/writer Ayo Edebiri (Bottoms, The Bear).

Prediction: Expect one of the next indie breakouts to have been first championed by the Letterboxd crowd when it became available to rent on the service.