Letterboxd Is Launching Its Personal Distinctive Tackle a ‘Video Retailer’

Letterboxd has lengthy been the discursive mecca the place movie nerds go to share their on-line opinions concerning the motion pictures they’ve watched. Now, nonetheless, the platform seems to be attempting to rework itself into a spot the place stated nerds may also watch motion pictures, not simply discuss them.

On Wednesday, the corporate announced that it would quickly be launching what it calls its “Video Retailer”—a “movie rental platform inside Letterboxd.” So far as could be discerned, this new characteristic goes to permit customers to lease (and watch) motion pictures proper out of the Letterboxd interface. The announcement says that it will likely be suitable with iOS, Android, Apple TV, Android TV, Chromecast, and AirPlay, and notes that different good TV app integrations are “within the works.”

Identical to the video shops of previous, this new on-line “retailer” will permit customers to select from quite a lot of “curated cabinets,” that are designed to information the consumer in the direction of specific cinematic experiences fairly than leaving them adrift in an endless sea of interchangeable content. Classes like “competition standouts,” “long-watchlisted titles,” “restorations and rediscoveries,” and “limited-time drops” will all be a part of the combo.

A few of the curation can be accomplished through an algorithm based mostly on consumer information. The corporate stated in a press launch: “We program these cabinets utilizing thousands and thousands of watchlists, opinions and different secret sauce alerts. It’s like strolling into your native video retailer and seeing the ’worker picks’ shelf—and people workers are numerous Letterboxd members throughout the globe.”

The location moreover notes that the supply and value of specific leases will rely on the consumer’s location.

Letterboxd’s new “Video Retailer” sounds a bit like the Criterion Channel, the place customers can choose from usually up to date movie collections which are solely obtainable for a restricted time (the announcement notes that some “cabinets can be obtainable for a restricted time solely”). If that’s the case, it’ll seemingly be an excellent mannequin for the web’s cinephiles, who could hanker for some path on the subject of what to look at.

Whereas all of it sounds very thrilling, there’s nonetheless rather a lot concerning the “Video Retailer” that we don’t know. Gizmodo reached out to Letterboxd for extra particulars concerning the upcoming characteristic, which is scheduled to go dwell early subsequent month.

It’s actually a nice flip of occasions for the favored movie website—and maybe not what most customers had been after its acquisition by Tiny, a big Canadian holding firm, which purchased the site for $50 million in 2023.

Normally, when a giant firm buys a scrappy little website, unhealthy issues occur. Nonetheless, since Tiny took over at Letterboxd, the location has solely continued to thrive and alter in largely optimistic methods. A brand new rental integration looks as if simply the ticket to maintain customers coming again for extra.