Letterboxd Video Store Is Here — The Best Movie App Just Changed How You Discover Movies
Letterboxd is leveling up from film diary to film marketplace, with plans for a transactional video-on-demand service that will let its 20 million users rent and buy films while spotlighting emerging filmmakers worldwide, following a reveal at the Cannes Film Festival.
Letterboxd is about to be more than the place you log your movie obsessions. The platform with more than 20 million members is getting into actual rentals, building a pay-per-view store that leans on the thing it already does best: crowd-powered curation.
What Letterboxd is actually launching
It is a TVOD (transactional video-on-demand) storefront, which means you pay to rent a title, watch it, and move on. The big swing is discovery: instead of burying you in an algorithmic scroll, Letterboxd is turning its community data into shelves that spotlight what people actually want to see, including new voices and movies from all over the world.
- Curated shelves built from millions of member watchlists and reviews — selections made by users for users
- No endless algorithm feed; you browse handpicked groupings instead
- Shelves include festival standouts, long-watchlisted titles, restorations and rediscoveries, and limited-time drops
- Rental pricing only; amounts will vary by region
- You can suggest titles for inclusion by tagging them with '#Letterboxd-video-store'
When is this happening?
Letterboxd first floated the Video Store at the Cannes Film Festival. The company recently said it would begin rolling out next month, and now they are calling it an early December 2025 launch. There is still no exact date on the calendar, but the window is set.
'Every day, we see members recommending films to each other, adding to their watchlists and hungry to discover more. Letterboxd Video Store is our way of delivering for those film lovers, creating a dedicated space for films that deserve an audience,' CEO Matthew Buchanan said earlier this year.
Why this could matter
Streaming started as the cheap, ad-free fix for cable and somehow looped right back to rising prices, shrinking libraries, and decision paralysis. A curated rental shop that treats movies like, well, movies — instead of content to fill a queue — could be a welcome reset. Think of it like a digital cousin of the video store era, minus the late fees.
Will it topple the giants? No. Netflix and Disney+ are not going anywhere, even if their choices make people grumpy. But a community-driven storefront that spotlights festival finds, restorations, and long-teased watchlist entries is exactly the kind of pressure release valve film fans have been asking for. If the curation stays sharp and the regional pricing is fair, this could be a genuinely useful add-on to your movie habit.