After launching on Wednesday, the Letterboxd Video Store was quickly hit with a recurring concern: that rentals are too expensive.
The popular cinephile social media service announced in early December that they would launch an online video rental platform on Dec. 10, one that offers access to underseen and, in some cases, unreleased films. Social media users quickly balked, however, when they saw that some titles carried a $20 price tag for two-day rental periods.
“how bout we close the store if $20 to rent one film for 48 hours is going to be the norm?” X user @editedbyliam asked on Wednesday.
Letterboxd quickly responded on social media to clarify the service’s pricing policy — namely, that the $20 price point only applies to movies that have not yet been distributed in certain countries, reflecting the PVOD rental prices of other first-run titles.
“Regarding the price, some films are priced in a way that reflects that they’re brand new or even unreleased, as in our Unreleased Gems shelf, and standard digital rental prices in each country,” Letterboxd posted in response to several critics. “Also, a portion of every rental goes to the filmmakers who have partnered with us on it. you’ll find some lower priced titles in our Lost and Found shelf. You may discover some new favorites there too.”
It’s a valid response. There are currently four films in the Unreleased Gems section of the video store: “The Mysterious Gaze of the Flamingo,” “It Ends,” “Sore: A Wife from the Future” and “Kennedy.” While each film has appeared at a handful of film festivals, such as Cannes and South by Southwest, none of them have received proper distribution in the U.S. at this time.
This makes Letterboxd the first-run distributor in the United States, which helps explain the admittedly steep rental price. While $20 outpaces your traditional $4 rental on other streaming services, it is equivalent to (if not cheaper than) other Premium Video On Demand rentals for newly released films. Other films on the Letterboxd Video Store are accessible for cheaper, such as Todd Haynes’ “Poison,” which can be rented for $4.
While Letterboxd received several comments about the $20 pricing, other social media users flocked to defend the new Video Store, citing the need to pay up-and-coming artists appropriately for their work. Comparisons were also drawn between the Video Store’s rental price and the cost of a film festival ticket.
“The hostility at the rental prices is a little frustrating and kind of proves to me that a lot of ppl who use Letterboxd don’t actually care about movies,” said @cpikoart on X. “Yes, you need to pay equivalent to a movie ticket to watch a film that you can’t watch anywhere else. That’s what PVOD is!”
