Letterboxd is a movie-centric website/app that allows people to track what movies they watch, create lists, add to an official watchlist, review movies, and discuss with people online. It is technically a social media site since it has followers and likes, but it doesn’t really function like Facebook or X. Either way, it’s an app for movie logging at its core. Now, however, it’s also going to be an app for movie watching.

Letterboxd to Add Rental Feature

Have you ever been scrolling through your Letterboxd watchlist, found a movie, and wanted to watch it, only to find out it’s not available or will cost a pretty penny to rent? You’re definitely not alone. I can’t count the amount of times I perused the 500+ movies I have saved to watch at some point and found the movie I needed that then was not actually available to me.

Not only is the app going to help that, but it’s also going to streamline it. You will be able to find a movie on the app and rent it directly from there. It’s not a subscription service, so you’ll just pay to rent the movie as and when you want it. Want to watch Oldboy? Now you can, and you can do it right from your watchlist!

The site is going to attempt to curate these shelves with movies that are highly desirable, including:

• Festival standouts that have not been distributed
• Long-watchlisted titles finally available
• Restorations and rediscoveries
• Limited-time drops of sneak peeks and unreleased gems

That movie that everyone loved at TIFF that hasn’t gotten picked up? You might be able to catch it now. They’re going to utilize “millions of watchlists, reviews and other secret sauce signals” to determine what movies to make available for rent. So it won’t quite be like going to the Blockbuster and searching for the latest hit blockbuster, but it will allow for lesser-known or harder to find titles to be right there at your fingertips.

And to top it all off, it won’t be restricted to your phone. Most Letterboxd users have the app, but a movie is certainly not at its best on a phone screen. This service will be available on the web, iOS, Android, Apple TV, Android TV, Chromecast, and Airplay, but they’re also developing smart-TV apps, so you can just head to the site from the TV itself, just like you would Netflix, HBO Max, or Disney+.

One important thing to note: Rental availability and cost will depend on the location, and we can expect the prices to be similar to other locations. Amazon Prime often has movies to rent for $3.99, which is a pretty standard cost. Letterboxd likely isn’t going to reinvent the wheel on that part.

If the movie you’re looking for isn’t available, you can recommend it. Simply make a list and tag it #video-store-recs, and the site will take a look and determine if it should add this movie. For the first time ever, some of the most inaccessible movies of all time will finally be available, so the film community can grow, and your own personal film experience can evolve.

Conclusion

Letterboxd is my favorite app. For reference, it has the fifth-most screen time on my phone in the last week. I spend a ton of that time looking for my next watch, but some of them, as I mentioned, aren’t available. Now, they will be. This is a brilliant change that helps drive home the mission of the site, and I couldn’t be more excited for this feature to be implemented.