Common questions

Yes. The Cinephile tier has no time limit, no feature decay, and no forced upgrades. You can vote, follow, submit up to five active slates, multi-cast the same film as many times as you want, participate in tournaments, earn badges, and use the Watch widget without ever paying. Cast Away makes money from Auteur subscriptions and modest advertising on the free tier — not from holding features hostage.

Founding pricing locks $2.49/mo (or $24.95/year) for life — Cast Away will never raise the rate on you, even after the standard price changes. You also get the founding badge next to your handle everywhere on the site and the gold “est. 2026” avatar frame. 250 spots total. Once they fill, the offer closes and the standard $4.99/mo price applies to new Auteurs.

Yes. Cancel from the Stripe customer portal — no phone calls, no retention scripts, no dark patterns. You keep your Auteur features until the end of the current billing period, then your account reverts to Cinephile with all your data intact. If you re-subscribe later as a founding member who already claimed a spot, your locked rate is restored.

Your Auteur badge and Auteur-only avatar frames disappear, your Letterboxd integration stops syncing new logs (your existing imports stay), and your DMs revert to Crew-only with the daily rate limit. Active slates beyond the free- tier limit of five stay visible but you can’t publish new ones until you re-upgrade or unpublish some. Slate Collections stay readable on your profile but you can’t create new ones. Your Badge Shelf keeps every badge you earned. Your votes, follows, and Crew are never touched.

Yes — annual is the default toggle. You pay for 10 months and get the other 2 free, which works out to about a 17% discount versus monthly billing. Standard Auteur drops from $4.99 to an effective $4.16/mo ($49.90 billed once a year). Founding-member annual is $24.95/year — about $2.08/mo, locked for life.

Not currently. The founding offer is the cheapest Cast Away will ever be — if it fits, claim it now.

Not yet. We’re prioritizing the Reels rewards system (where you’ll be able to earn and gift Auteur access via in-app currency) over a direct gifting flow. If enough users ask, we’ll build both.

A cast list for a single film, bound to a mode — Timeless (any era) or Current (working actors today). You pick the roles, the actors, the director, and you make a case for it. Other casters Bravo or Boo on the slate as a whole and on individual picks. See How it works for the full walkthrough.

Two-button verdicts at every level: Bravo (comedy mask) or Boo(tragedy mask). Apply them to whole slates, and independently to individual picks within a slate. Votes shape Discover ranking, trending, tournament seeding, and a film’s “top slates” panel. Your vote weight is the same regardless of tier — there’s no pay-to-win.

Email and a magic link — we send you a one-time sign- in link, you click it, you’re in. No password needed to start. After signing in you can optionally set a password from Settings for faster repeat sign-ins. Cast Away is in closed beta right now, so your email needs to be on the invite list; reply to your invite if you have one, or ask a friend with access to add you.

Settings → scroll to the bottom → “Danger zone” → type DELETE MY ACCOUNTto confirm. Deletion is immediate and permanent: your slates, votes, follows, blocks, badges, and DMs are cascaded out within seconds, and the auth.users row is reaped by a daily cron within ~8 days. We can’t un-delete an account after the fact.

Connect your Letterboxd handle from Settings and your public ratings show up next to films across the site — your own little “I gave this 4.5” reminder when you’re browsing. Free accounts get a one-time import at connect; Auteur gets ongoing import (refreshed hourly). For the full backlog and your watchlist, drop your letterboxd.com/settings/data ZIP in Settings — we’ll process it in the background. Read-only on our side; we never post to your Letterboxd account.

Cast Away’s in-app currency. You earn Reels by participating — daily sign-ins, publishing slates, casting votes, leaving comments, winning tournament rounds, keeping a streak. You spend them on cosmetic upgrades (avatar frames, handle tints), creative tools (slate boosts, pins, Director’s Cut unlocks), or trials (24-hour Auteur). Auteur subscribers earn at 1.5×. Anti-abuse controls run daily; vote-ring patterns get flagged.

The little “Feedback” button in the bottom-right of every page is the fastest path — it goes straight to the team. For copyright takedowns see the DMCA page; for harassment or platform-abuse reports, use the report flow on the offending slate / profile, or email legal@cast-away-app.com.