Tiny, based in British Columbia, has made a majority acquisition of 60 per cent of Letterboxd in a deal that values Letterboxd at about US$50m (NZ$83m), according to reporting by media including Variety, The Hollywood Reporter and New York Times.
“Teaming up with Tiny represents a big leap forward for us,” said Buchanan and von Randow in a press release.
“We see this as a huge win for our community, enabling us to cement Letterboxd’s future with additional resources without sacrificing the DNA of what makes it special.”
Letterboxd is free, although it has paid membership tiers. The site has 16 full-time employees and a dozen part-timers, according to The New York Times.
“We’ve been huge fans and users of Letterboxd for a long time and could not be more excited to join forces with Matthew, Karl, and the rest of the team for the long term,” Andrew Wilkinson, co-founder of Tiny, said in a statement.
In an essay on Letterboxd, Buchanan wrote that the site is driven by his lifelong love of film, with memories of “Air-freighted copies of Empire to keep up with the new releases that would eventually make their way to New Zealand shores six to nine months later, if at all”.
Buchanan said he wanted to keep the site’s focus on community and that “very little else will change” with Tiny’s acquisition.
“In some ways, it’s like we’ve been making great shorts for over a decade, and now we have the dream team for our first feature.”
- RNZ
