If you’re into film and you don’t have a Letterboxd account, where have you been? The movie review, rating and cataloguing app has been around since 2013 when it was launched by Auckland tech entrepreneurs and film-obsessives Matt Buchanan and Karl von Randow. But it wasn’t until the pandemic that it exploded in popularity, hitting two million users — and now it's gone mainstream, reaching a membership of over 13 million in 190 countries, thanks to film geeks and celebrity sleuths alike piling on the bandwagon.
It’s in no small part thanks to some impressive celebrity endorsements. Paul Mescal calls himself a “shady reviewer” on the platform (though Reddit users haven’t been able to track down his account). Then there’s Killers of the Flower Moon director Martin Scorsese, who after joining in October 2023 became the most-followed person on the app, with his lists of movies helping to introduce the Gen Z-heavy userbase (around a quarter of users are under 24) to plenty of classics along the way. And Barbie lead Margot Robbie is also known to have created an account.
