Letterboxd, the social platform for movie buffs, is reportedly looking for a new owner

Letterboxd has risen in popularity in recent years. Once a niche site only for the most ardent movie nerds, the site — which allows users to rate, review and recommend movies to each other — has continued to add accounts in the tens of millions, thanks in large part to interest from millennials and Generation Z. Now, the company’s controlling investor has apparently announced that it’s looking to cash out.

Canadian holding company Tiny, which owns about 60 percent of Letterboxd, has been courting several potential buyers, including Versant, the parent company of CNBC and MS NOW (formerly MSNBC), Semaphore reported on Sunday. Other potential buyers include The Ankler, a popular Hollywood news publication, according to Semaphore. Tiny bought the platform in 2023, valuing it at more than $50 million. It is unclear whether the company is close to any type of deal.

Representatives for Letterboxd and Tiny did not immediately provide comment when contacted by TechCrunch.

Letterboxd, founded in 2011, has seen a jump in users in the past few years, jumping to about 26 million users this year, up from 1.7 million in 2020, according to the New York Times. In recent years, the site has seen interest from movie studios, which see it as a means of marketing films and a source of information about moviegoer trends, as well as from the Academy Awards, which collaborated with the social platform in a digital content partnership several years ago.