If you’re a big-time movie geek, you likely already have a Letterboxd account. The movie-rating website has become a phenomenon so big that it’s pushed its way to the higher echelons of pop culture. When Scream VI references Letterboxd, there’s more to this site than just being a place where you rate the movies you’ve seen.
But where does the website go from here? Letterboxd already has a lock on movie lovers by wanting to post their opinions. But with the prospect of video-on–demand on the horizon, it’s a community that has a chance to be something more.
The Hit Movie Catalog Site
Letterboxd ascended above other movie review sites by not trying to replicate what the competition had done. Creators Matthew Buchanan and Karl von Randow instead looked at the website Goodreads and decided they basically wanted that, but for movies. It’s an ideal inspiration considering how Goodreads has served as a welcoming review site for both readers and authors, remaining as such despite the recent sale by the creators.
The versatility of Letterboxd made it more engaging than other movie review sites. Users could rate movies, write reviews, create playlists for specific films, and select their top four films, something that has become a tantalizing question to pose towards celebrities on the red carpet. The inviting interface and features led to massive growth for the platform, with one billion movie scores logged by 2022.
What helped make Letterboxd a more engaging online community was how the COVID-19 pandemic forced us all onto digital platforms. It’s not like there were many physical places for movie lovers to hang out prior, but the pandemic made the shift towards online spaces feel more obligatory. However, while other websites felt like islands for movie lovers, Letterboxd had connections standard to social media apps.
People wouldn’t just read your reviews and playlists; they could also follow, like, and comment on your opinions. You were interacting more with others rather than just a movie page. There is an inviting nature where it feels more like you’re interacting with a community instead of documenting your data on movie preferences.
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The lavish end-of-year presentation tallying up top-rated films is also a treat to scroll through. The presentation itself is visually stunning, but the fact that the results are directly affected by the users feels more like a celebration of the community than just a year’s review in movies. With a community that has ballooned to 17 million users as of this year, Letterboxd has taken steps to capitalize on the allure.
More Than Just Reviews
To keep a website like Letterboxd functioning, there has to be some source of income, and the company has managed to accomplish the tricky feat of getting the users to chip in for the site. Users can pay for a Pro or Patron account to access more features, like filtering films by streaming services and customizing their profile page further. There’s also merchandise for those who feel like wearing a shirt that screams to everybody, “I like talking online about movies.”
The move towards video-on-demand is not entirely unexpected. Letterboxd has had a strong relationship with filmmakers and film distributors, beyond giving them a space to chat and promote. Film pages for movies streaming on MUBI and The Criterion Channel, ideal for classic movie streaming, have the services bundled with a link to the streaming service so that you can watch the film immediately. The next logical step for this website is shifting towards a video-on-demand service.
Why VOD Would Fit
It should be noted that a movie review site hosting movies is not all that new. Before being consumed by Rotten Tomatoes in the Warner Bros. purchase, Flixster was a website where you could rate movies and also digitally rent/purchase films. There was a convenience factor in going directly from watching a movie to rating it on the same website.
Convenience has also been a key factor in Letterboxd’s becoming a one-stop shop for cinephiles. The website already boasts news articles, a podcast, and gift links to favorite movie books and Blu-rays. Considering that the gift links point towards Amazon, a local VOD service seems more like cutting out the middleman.
Given all the variables, moving towards a video-on-demand feature wouldn’t be easy. In addition to the infrastructure and bandwidth required to get the service up and running, Letterboxd would likely want to integrate video with the collected movie data.
But it would be worth pursuing, making the service feel more like hanging out at the video store. Having your friends recommend a movie on Letterboxd and then being able to watch it right there on the website would be an ideal feature. It’s the closest we might get to that feeling of your movie-obsessed friend raving about a new film and then plunking a copy in your hands.
Letterboxd has come a long way from being just a movie review website to the point where giving it such a simplistic label feels almost insulting. Given how well the site has been doing, the addition of video-on-demand has the presence of more than just another profit avenue for the company. Like the other features, it has a chance to further grow a community of movie lovers and become another punchline of a Scream sequel.
