Guillermo del Toro Watches 1,000 Movies a Year — and Letterboxd Users Are Trying to Keep Up

Yes, Letterboxd did experience a temporary crash today. It’s quite possible it had to do with users checking their “Year in Film” summaries, which included the number of films they watched, and the filmmaker and actor they most experienced — meaning traffic spikes were higher than normal. You could see these summaries posted all over social media today.

Screenwriter, and WoR friend, Larry Karazewski logged an astounding 624 movies in 2025. I noticed a few who were in the 700s. That’s around two movies a day, every day of the year.

On Letterboxd, there’s been a recent surge in the trend of logging as many movies as possible, often called “rate-everything” or “list completion” behavior. Users are motivated by several factors: hitting personal goals, or maximizing their Year in Review stats. Some treat it like a challenge — logging hundreds or even thousands of films in a year.

The downside of logging as many movies as possible is that it can turn a fun hobby into a numbers-driven grind, where the focus shifts from genuinely enjoying and reflecting on films to simply hitting totals. A kind of cinematic burnout.

It’s been a long time since I counted the number of movies I watched in any given year. I’d say my guesstimate would be around 300, tops, for 2025 releases. Maybe another few hundred for older movies. Between the various festivals I attend, the weekly morning press screenings, and my penchant for having TCM on throughout the day while I work or do other things, I’d say my overall number is quite high. Sometimes I go through phases that result in massive binge-watching of film classics from the ‘40s, ‘50s, ‘60s, and beyond. This year, my decade of choice was the ‘30s, attempting to fill in the gaps of titles I missed from that decade.

However, the true champ of binge-watching might just be Guillermo del Toro, who not too long ago confessed that he still watches 3–4 movies a day, so his number is over 1000 movies watched per year.

Del Toro said that as he continues to develop movies like “The Buried Giant,” he still watches “three movies a day” for inspiration, and often that means rewatching. “If you see all ‘All About Eve’ when you’re 15, and you see ‘All About Eve’ when you’re 40, you see two entirely different movies.”

Watching a thousand movies a year is not for the faint of heart, nor for those who treat cinema as mere entertainment. It requires a kind of obsessive devotion, a willingness to let films fill your waking hours. It’s a life lived inside celluloid and digital frames, where every story, every cut, every note of music becomes a teacher, and the world around you suddenly feels more cinematic.

Del Toro matches Richard Linklater, who told The New Yorker in 2014 that he used to watch four movies a day in his twenties. Of course, now that he’s busy with filmmaking, that number has dropped. Not with del Toro — he still maintains the pace. Meanwhile, Steven Soderbergh just shared a list of everything he watched in 2025, and his total comes to 144 movies. We’ll cut him some slack, considering he also released three new films he directed this year.