UPDATE, 9:30 p.m. ET: Letterboxd said the service was back online, after being down for more than six hours Thursday. “We’re back up, thanks for your patience,” the company said on X at 9:11 p.m. ET, adding that users who are still experiencing issues with the site or app should email help@letterboxd.com “and we will get back to you asap.”
EARLIER:
Fans of popular movie-reviews social network Letterboxd were frustrated Thursday by an extended outage that has left the service inaccessible.
A message on the Letterboxd site said, “We’re taking a short break between rounds. Letterboxd is down for scheduled maintenance. We’ll be back soon!” It was accompanied by a photo still of Robert De Niro in Martin Scorsese’s “Raging Bull.” Other attempts to access the site returned a “500 Internal Server Error” message, which is a nonspecific HTTP error code. Users reported that the Letterboxd app was not functioning, either.
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According to posts on social media, the service first began experiencing technical issues as early as 2:20 p.m. ET Thursday.
In a message on X, the official Letterboxd account acknowledged the outage (with a crying-face emoji) and said it was working to restore service. “We’re on it,” the message said. “Apologies fam — we haven’t vanished. The team are working to restore order as quickly as possible. Thanks for your patience and support. Back soon. Love always, The Letterboxd Team.”
In a separate statement sent to Variety, a Letterboxd rep said, “Apologies to our movie family, this is an unplanned outage and our devs are working 24/7 to resolve this as quickly as possible, and have urgently escalated to our hosting supplier for support. Thanks for everyone’s patience and support.”
Letterboxd — which has attracted celebrity fans including Scorsese, Margot Robbie, Olivia Rodrigo, Ava DuVernay and Christopher McQuarrie — says it has more than 10 million registered accounts. The company was founded in 2011 by New Zealand natives Matthew Buchanan and Karl von Randow, who last year sold a 60% controlling stake to Canadian investment firm Tiny in a deal pegging the company’s value at over $50 million.
Users took to social media to express their dismay about the Letterboxd outage. Many of them, of course, used clips from movies to illustrate their angst: