Letterboxd's $330 Million Suitor and a Chicken on the Run

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Coming up on Spotlight: the movie-logging app Letterboxd may be getting a new owner, Godzilla stomps into American theaters, John Wick finally gets his Impossible Task, and a chicken leads one of the weekend's strangest new movies.

Letterboxd, the place where millions of people log every film they watch, give it stars, and argue about their Four Favorites, looks set to join The New York Times. The Times reports that its parent company is in exclusive talks to buy the site in a deal valuing it at three hundred thirty million dollars. Nothing is signed yet. Sony and A24 were reportedly the other finalists, and Deadline says A24 is now out of the running.

That price is a big jump. In 2023, the Canadian company Tiny bought sixty percent of Letterboxd at a valuation of about fifty million dollars. Now it's going for more than twenty times its projected earnings for this year. One of the bankers running the sale calls it "a phenomenon" that draws thirty million users a month with zero paid marketing.

For users, the question is what changes. The Times has reportedly discussed keeping the two New Zealand founders, Matthew Buchanan and Karl von Randow, in charge. IndieWire floats the obvious possibilities: Letterboxd tied into Times reviews, or bundled with subscriptions to the company that already runs Wordle and The Athletic. A24 had promised to leave the business model alone. The Times hasn't said what it would do, and a nonprofit group says it's weeks away from a rival bid. For now, keep logging.

Godzilla Minus Zero opens across North America today, and the early numbers look huge. Deadline hears it took in about six million dollars in previews. That's nearly three times what Godzilla Minus One managed before its opening, and a record for its American distributor, GKIDS, beating Miyazaki's The Boy and the Heron. Forecasts had pointed to thirty million dollars or more this weekend; Deadline now thinks it could go well past that. Also opening today, The Cat in the Hat, which made about a million dollars in previews.

Keanu Reeves is going back to the beginning. Lionsgate has officially greenlit an animated John Wick movie, with Reeves signed to voice the assassin. It's a prequel about the Impossible Task, the job John had to finish to leave the criminal world and marry Helen. Since the first film, it's been the franchise's most famous unseen moment. Shannon Tindle, who directed the animated Ultraman: Rising, is directing, and series director Chad Stahelski is producing. There's no release date yet. If live-action physics ever held John Wick back, they won't now.

Two smaller films open in theaters today, and both are worth tracking down.

Hen, from Hungarian director György Pálfi, follows a black chicken who escapes a Greek factory farm and ends up at a run-down seaside restaurant, where the humans are tangled up in Europe's migrant crisis. Everything is seen from the hen's level, and she doesn't understand any of it. IndieWire's David Ehrlich calls it a "cute, cockeyed" comedy, somewhere between the donkey movie EO and the animated Flow. The hen is played by a bird named Feri, plus seven stunt doubles. Ehrlich's favorite gag has her moving a cardboard box from the inside, like a scene from Metal Gear Solid. Ari Aster is an executive producer.

Everytime, from Austrian director Sandra Wollner, is the heavier pick. A Berlin teenager dies early in the film, and her mother, her little sister and her boyfriend are left with her phone, her messages and her Minecraft world. Then a family trip to Tenerife starts bending reality. Ehrlich calls it one of the most haunting films of the decade. It's in limited release now, with a wider release planned for February.

Rush are headed to the Sphere in Las Vegas. Geddy Lee and Alex Lifeson will play five shows there next May, under the name Elevate From The Norm. Lee says when he first heard about the Sphere, he thought it was a shame Rush had stopped touring, because the venue seemed made for their kind of show. Then they started touring again, for the first time since Neil Peart died in 2020. The plan is all of 2112, all of Moving Pictures, and more. The shows are May twenty-first through thirtieth, and tickets go on sale November thirteenth.

Finally, Pink Floyd are celebrating fifty years of Animals, the 1977 album with the inflatable pig floating over Battersea Power Station. It's four long songs about bleak late-seventies Britain, inspired by Animal Farm and by punk. The biggest version of the box set has five discs. It includes an unreleased Roger Waters song called Young Nicholas Jon and a full concert from Oakland in May 1977, recorded by a nineteen-year-old bootlegger named Reinhard Hohlwein. Fifty years later, his tape is getting an official release. It's out January twenty-second.

That's Spotlight for today. If you're near an art house this weekend, give the chicken a chance. See you tomorrow.