Business is not going smoothly for movie subscription service MoviePass, which is supposed to allow customers to watch one movie in theaters per a day for a $9.95 per month subscription pass.
Amid funding issues and a deep drop in stock prices, MoviePass CEO Mitch Lowe today held an all-hands meeting where he told employees that customers will be restricted from seeing major movie releases that include "Christopher Robin" and "The Meg."
The information comes courtesy of an employee who shared the news with Business Insider, and it comes just after MoviePass prevented many of its subscribers from seeing "Mission Impossible: Fallout," the major movie release last weekend.
In addition to informing employees that subscribers will not be able to see "Christopher Robin" and "The Meg," on opening weekend Business Insider says that Lowe also "implied that the practice of not offering tickets to major movies would continue for the foreseeable future." Lowe's announcement echoed a statement MoviePass released over the weekend suggesting that "certain movies may not always be available in every theater on our platform."
"Christopher Robin" is set to be released this weekend, while "The Meg" comes out on August 10.
MoviePass has been forced to restrict access to popular movies due to financing issues, with reports indicating the service was down last week after parent company Helios & Matheson ran out of money, only restoring the service after securing a loan for millions.
To prevent another shutdown, customers in many markets were not permitted to see "Mission Impossible: Fallout," and MoviePass has also implemented surge pricing for popular titles that customers have complained are affecting nearly every movie even at non-peak times.
At the time of this article, MoviePass appears to be down once again, with subscribers seeing a blank screen instead of movie options. MoviePass has not yet commented on today's outage, but the MoviePass website continues to allow new subscribers to sign up.
Top Rated Comments
They were trying to grow quickly in the hopes to monetize the data they collect. The issue is they went bankrupt before they could do that. There are other subscription services out there that try to make a profit on a per customer basis rather than trying to have the people who rarely use MoviePass subsidize those who abuse it.
The only conceivable way forward for these types of subscription services are subscriptions per movie theater/chain that is less generous than MoviePass.
[doublepost=1532993301][/doublepost]Well, that works out, because MoviePass won't be here for the long haul. Their business plan was always unsustainable. It was basically, "sell someone else's prestige product at a loss, and then persuade that company to cut you a deal so you get more money and they get less, all while making their customers think that prestige product is overpriced." The theater chains were never going to go for that.
MoviePass should be required to offer a refund to customers who signed up before they changed the terms. It's like Darth Vader at Bespin; do they just have to pray they don't alter the deal further?
Either way, this service won't last much longer as is.
I'm pretty sure the business model 'buy something at full retail price, sell it for less' has never worked out for anyone in the history of commerce.