It is critical we continue fighting back against media consolidation.

In an era of historic media consolidation, the #Letterboxd4All coalition of filmmakers, fans and investors are running a race-against-the-clock campaign to buy Letterboxd and make it a community-owned public benefit corporation.

What is the Campaign for Letterboxd?

Letterboxd is a social platform where 30 million members discover and discuss films. Now it’s for sale.

Intrinsic has a Harvard-built model for community ownership that rewards investors, artists, and fans for working together.

The sale of community platforms rarely goes well for the community. Bandcamp, Goodreads, IMDB, MySpace, Twitter, and tumblr are just a handful of examples of beloved platforms that didn’t survive acquisition and corporatization.

Intrinsic’s community exit model rewrites that story. Our business model allows mission-driven institutions to write eight-figure checks alongside platform users, filmmakers, and workers writing three-figure checks and then exit to the community.

Where we are now:

• We have completed the legal work of structuring a public benefit holding corporation for collaborative acquisition.

• We have recruited partners for a blended-finance coalition ready to write seven-, eight-, and potentially nine-figure checks alongside community investors.

  • We now have enough support to open the community investment channels. We are bringing together industry support organizations, individual angels, mission-driven institutional funds, filmmakers, and fans in a truly democratic ownership model.

• We have developed materials and tools on blended finance, collaborative ownership, and community exits that we will publish for free at the conclusion of the sale. We want anyone and everyone to have access to our blueprints and the ability to utilize them for their own work.

• We have worked with our incredible partners at Wefunder to prepare opportunities for both accredited and non-accredited individuals to invest from $100 and up.

• We have opened a GoFundMe campaign for folks who don’t want to invest $100 but might want to contribute a small amount.

  • Any funds contributed through the GoFundMe will be invested via our non-profit, and the non-profit will own the equity position in Letterboxd. This means that any profits will go back to the non-profit to fund grants for filmmakers. They will not benefit investors or be part of a for-profit investor’s equity position.

• We have secured a fiscal sponsor able to work with individuals who wish to deploy donor-advised fund (DAF) money for philanthropic investments or make tax-deductible donations of $250 or more.

• We have structured our contracts so that if we are not part of a winning bid, everyone gets their money back. If you invest through Wefunder, you get your money back. If you donate on GoFundMe, you get your money back. We win or you get your money back.

Here is the blueprint for our financial coalition. It is complex! But this is how a scrappy group of true believers is going to compete with institutional finance:

This campaign is about far more than saving a platform. It is about democratizing access to audience, and building an ecosystem in which self-distribution is a viable model.

It is also about building the antidote to consolidation and tech oligarchy.

Over a 15-year period Letterboxd has amassed an audience of more than 30 million users. This audience is critical to the future of independent film, both narrative and documentary. The next owner of Letterboxd can use it to bolster their own bottom line, or they can steward it for the benefit of the entire community.

We know which option we think is worth fighting for, no matter how daunting the fight may seem.

It’s go time. If you want to know why this fight is worth it, keep reading.

What’s below

• The brokenhearted

• The case for hope

• The Campaign for Letterboxd Phase 2: Letterboxd4All

• The will to fight

• The game plan

• Links and calls to action

The brokenhearted

I was in New York City in June during the NBA Finals. It was a swelteringly hot week, especially for a heat-intolerant Bostonian.

One day while rushing between panels at the Tribeca Film Festival and Impact Lounge, I hailed a cab. After interrupting the driver’s phone call to beg him to turn up the air conditioning (??????), we were racing down 7th Avenue.

“NO, NO, NO, NO, I’m not gonna do it. I’m not coming!” the driver yelled into his headset.

I tried to observe him through the divider. He had a thick New York accent and a scally cap and wore a white undershirt. There was a bedazzled cross hanging from his rear view mirror and a framed picture of three little girls that looked like it had been affixed to a series of dashboards for at least 20 years.

“Because they’re gonna break my fuckin’ heart and I can’t take it!” he despaired.

I smiled in the backseat. Not out of cruelty — because he was talking about the Knicks.

The case for hope

It was Wednesday, June 10.

Two nights earlier, the Spurs had ended the Knicks’ 13-game winning streak. The city that had waited 53 years to be called World Champions was on edge. I recognized the feeling instinctively. It was the same way I felt as a college student living in New York in Fall 2004 when the Curse of the Bambino had every New Englander’s hearts in their throats for 30 straight days.

The cabbie’s attempt to spare his tender soul more injury made me flash back to speaking to my dad during the American League Championship Series.

When the Yankees won the first three games of the ALCS, my dad slipped into a well-worn emotional suit: the comfortable defeatism of a 20th century born Massachusetts baseball fanatic.

I called him after Game 3, in which the Sox blew their first home game of the series and the Yankees set a new record for runs in a postseason game. I was surprised to hear him sound LESS agitated than he was before the game.

“I’m not happy, but at least now I can stop thinking about how to get World Series tickets,” he said, New England pragmatism subbing in for the glimpse of warm, Floridian optimism we’d allowed ourselves to feel.

The Boston Globe weighed in, too:

“They are down, 3–0, after last night’s 19–8 rout, and, in this sport, that is an official death sentence. Soon it will be over, and we will spend another dreary winter lamenting this and lamenting that.”

New England had decided. It was over. Don’t bother hoping for a comeback, even though four games remained in the series. The chances of the Red Sox sweeping the next four games against the almighty Yankees was too much to ask of people who had been licking their wounds for 86 years.

When the Red Sox showed up the next night and battled their way to a 12th inning win, New England went to work tired.

“It woulda been better if they lost,” my dad protested. “Now we gotta stay up late again before they shit the bed.”

I will skip ahead here and say that the next four games might have been the greatest moment in sports history for anyone born in New England ever.

It also taught me a funny lesson.

Hoping, fighting, and sticking with it is a lot of fucking fun.

No matter the odds.

Because you just don’t know what’s going to happen until it happens.

The Campaign for Letterboxd Phase 2: Letterboxd4All

When we announced our campaign in May, the reactions broke down into four categories.

• Immediate enthusiasm (I get it, let’s go!!!)

• Cautious embrace (This sounds cool, I’ll join as soon as other people do…)

• Curious neutrality (How would this even work?)

• Outright hostility (What makes you think you can do business with LionTree/compete with private equity/crowdfund an acquisition? There is no way for it to work and you are an idiot for trying.)

The immediate enthusiasm crowd could see what we saw:

A community of almost 30 million Letterboxd users who love cinema, actively engage with it, go to theaters, and create organic, word-of-mouth campaigns.

The opportunity to create sliding-scale marketing channels so that microbudget indie films get to find their audiences just like big-budget studio films.

A TVOD platform that highlights films without distribution and generates momentum.

A chance to create opportunities for fan financing of independent films…I could go on, but I think you see where I’m headed.

The cautious embracers got it, too. But they said things like, “I want to see it pick up some traction before I support you publicly. I’m rooting for you, though!”

The curious neutrals had good questions! What is community ownership? How could you pull it off at scale? What does exiting to the community mean? How does blended finance work? Questions born from healthy skepticism meant to fact-find and assess, not dismiss.

Our team made 1000 phone calls, did webinars and interviews, and explained that the model was years in the making — gestated in a decade of social entrepreneurship, and delivered to the light at Harvard Law, where we fleshed out the legal structure on which our business model rests.

We converted most of these folks once they understood how much work had already been done, and our plan for scaling it up with a new round of legal work specifically tailored for raising a substantially larger fund than we originally envisioned.

The outright hostiles were a small but feisty contingent. They arrived with predetermined certainty this could never work and indignation that we would even try.

They accused us of scammery, naïveté, foolishness, and pride. They were mad at us for even attempting something so audacious.

I found that fascinating.

The will to fight

Both sides of the industry — studio and independent — exist in economic precariousness.

Mergers, acquisitions, and consolidation are not signs of economic health. They are symptoms of illness.

They happen because publicly traded companies demand rapacious growth. Because venture-backed companies demand exits at insane multiples. Because mercenary CEOs are brought in by shareholders to ensure the people at the top of the economic pyramid get huge payouts even if the people at the bottom lose their jobs.

In the journey Intrinsic has taken over the past five months, I have noticed a pattern. Filmmakers bemoan the state of the industry. Financiers say there are few investments that recoup. People talk about gatekeeping and worry about the job losses created by consolidation.

I have not met anyone who thinks the industry is doing well and should maintain the status quo.

But. BUT.

When presented with opportunities to fight back, or to organize, or to build a viable alternative, the hostile skeptics grow loud and agitated.

Though they comprise significantly less than 50% of the people we’ve spoken to, they are adamant this is not worth the effort.

My answer is this:

There are two options — submit or fight. That’s it, just those two.

Is it somehow wiser to preemptively submit? To double down on defeatism and wave the white flag before we ever even try?

OR — should we choose healthy skepticism, ask for details, conduct feasibility studies, and determine what small victories we can achieve in pursuit of the Big Hairy Audacious Goal that advance the cause, regardless of the final score?

What could we achieve if we collectively decide it is okay to have audacious goals, pursue them doggedly, and achieve strategic gains even if we don’t win this round?

If you cannot bring yourself to believe it is okay to pursue goals you may not fully achieve, then I invite you to think deeply about who is served by defeatism.

Who benefits when we preemptively surrender?

I think when we focus on how much money or power the usual suspects have, we stop running our own race. And that is our job, to run our own race, achieve lots of small wins that compound, and keep running until the race is over. Not before. And not even if someone else crosses the finish line first.

And if you want to hear another take on it, listen to Joseph Gordon-Levitt.

The game plan

1. If you want to make an equity investment for ownership (Wefunder — $100 and up)

Our Wefunder campaign is now open for reservations starting at $100. Please click here to view our campaign page, which includes our pitch deck and detailed information on the investment. If we aren’t part of the winning bid, you get your money back.

2. If you want to kick in a few bucks (GoFundMe — $1 and up)

Not everyone wants to or can invest for equity. If you want to throw in for the cause, click here to view our GoFundMe page. If we aren’t part of the winning bid, you get your money back.

• Any funds contributed through the GoFundMe will be invested via our non-profit, and the non-profit will own the equity position in Letterboxd. This means that any profits will go back to the non-profit to fund grants for filmmakers. They will not benefit investors or be part of a for-profit investor’s equity position.

And DO NOT UNDERESTIMATE THE POWER OF A FEW DOLLARS.

Every contribution to the GoFundMe is vote for community ownership, even if it’s $1.

And it can add up! Letterboxd has over 30 million users. If three million of them contribute $10, that adds $30 million to our bid. And, as above, any profits generated from these contributions will go directly to our non-profit, Intrinsic Impact Collaborative, to fund grants for filmmakers.

3. If you want to deploy DAF money or make a tax-deductible donation ($250 and up)

Fill out this form and we will connect you to our fiscal sponsor.

For the still unconvinced

We get it. Hope feels dangerous. The world seems insane. The idea that we can go toe-to-toe with private equity, legacy media, entertainment conglomerates, or investor consortiums seems outlandish. You are tired. There is only so much energy you can muster.

If that’s you, we have one request. Think about your favorite sports movie. Who were you rooting for and why? What odds were they trying to overcome? What work did they put in? Did they reach their goal? Fall short but achieve something valuable anyway?

When the football team from the rich neighboring town rolled up to play and the ne’er-do-wells watched their gleaming bus pull into the parking lot, what did your heart say?

Did it shout, QUIT!!! Go home now! There’s no way you can beat these guys!

Did you wish they’d just lie down on the field and let the fancy team run their plays unchallenged? Were you exasperated when they put their helmets on and lined up, sure to take a bruising?

Or did your heart soar? Did you root for them? Did you hold your breath waiting for a glimmer of hope to appear?

Did you watch until the 4th quarter, chest tight because they still had a chance?

When they took possession with seconds to play, a seemingly insurmountable distance from the rich kids’ end zone, did you yell STOP! DON’T THROW!

Or did you think, Throw! THROW! Throw the Hail Mary! What do you have to lose?

We’re gonna throw.

Because it’s not over until the final whistle blows.

And you just never know what’s gonna happen.

Calls to action

Please read our Wefunder page, even if you are absolutely not going to invest

We’d love for you to be informed about our work, even if you don’t support it.

Please follow our socials to increase our reach

Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/letterboxd4all.bsky.social

Instagram: https://instagram.com/letterboxd4all

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=61595051455394

TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@letterboxd4all

The artist formerly known as Tw!tter: https://x.com/Letterboxd4All

Website: https://letterboxd4all.com

Please spread the word.

Sign up here to receive campaign updates. Forward them to people who care about the future of independent filmmaking, the future of tech, THE FUTURE IN GENERAL.

PICK UP THE PHONE AND TALK TO PEOPLE. Five minutes of time telling people directly why this matters is worth dozens of hours posting.

THANK YOU, WE LOVE YOU, LET’S DO THIS.