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 in regards to the films they’ve watched. Now, nonetheless, the platform seems to be attempting to rework itself into a spot the place stated nerds can even watch films, not simply speak about them.

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

Similar to the video shops of outdated, this new on-line “retailer” will enable customers to choose from a wide range of “curated cabinets,” that are designed to information the person in direction of explicit cinematic experiences moderately than leaving them adrift in an endless sea of interchangeable content. Classes like “pageant standouts,” “long-watchlisted titles,” “restorations and rediscoveries,” and “limited-time drops” will all be a part of the combo.

A few of the curation shall be achieved through an algorithm based mostly on person knowledge. The corporate stated in a press launch: “We program these cabinets utilizing hundreds of thousands of watchlists, critiques 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 positioning moreover notes that the supply and price of explicit leases will depend upon the person’s location.

Letterboxd’s new “Video Retailer” sounds a bit like the Criterion Channel, the place customers can decide from frequently up to date movie collections which are solely obtainable for a restricted time (the announcement notes that some “cabinets shall 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 course in terms of what to look at.

Whereas all of it sounds very thrilling, there’s nonetheless lots in regards to the “Video Retailer” that we don’t know. Gizmodo reached out to Letterboxd for extra particulars in regards to the upcoming function, which is scheduled to go reside early subsequent month.

It’s definitely a nice flip of occasions for the favored movie web site—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.

Often, when a giant firm buys a scrappy little web site, dangerous 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.