MoviePass CEO Says Subscribers Will Be Restricted From Seeing Upcoming Major Movies

Monday July 30, 2018 3:57 PM PDT by Juli Clover
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."

MoviePass' Peak Pricing
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.

Image via Twitter
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.

Tag: MoviePass
73 comments


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moabal
3 weeks ago
Obviously this business model is not going to work long term. Simple math.

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.
Rating: 18 Votes
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scuac
3 weeks ago
THis pyramid scheme is finally crumbling, surprised it lasted this long.
Rating: 11 Votes
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CarlJ
3 weeks ago

They are incompetent at best, and I hope their CEO goes to the kind of prison where they address his complaints about unwanted shower intimacy in the same way he addressed my cancelation request.

You are sincerely hoping the CEO goes to prison and gets raped? And gets no help from the guards? Neat.
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So tell me again, why do I want to pay a monthly subscription to see movies, when the movies, I want to see are excluded? I can't see them being very successful over the long haul

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.
Rating: 9 Votes
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maflynn
3 weeks ago
So tell me again, why do I want to pay a monthly subscription to see movies, when the movies, I want to see are excluded? I can't see them being very successful over the long haul
Rating: 9 Votes
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mattyj2001
3 weeks ago

It figures that people would pay for an entire year in advance, then they would alter the deal a few months in. Anybody who can do math has to know this service would be unsustainable? Especially with MoviePass paying full retail price for the tickets, even requiring you to put them on a special MoviePass debit card?

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.


Too bad they don't have any money to pay those refunds! Yearly subscribers are kind of in a bind. Even if there's a class action lawsuit against them, they don't have any assets to pay anyone.

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.
Rating: 7 Votes
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zorinlynx
3 weeks ago
It figures that people would pay for an entire year in advance, then they would alter the deal a few months in. Anybody who can do math has to know this service would be unsustainable? Especially with MoviePass paying full retail price for the tickets, even requiring you to put them on a special MoviePass debit card?

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.
Rating: 7 Votes
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dmylrea
3 weeks ago

In other news, all 14 people who use this service plan to cancel their subscription.


You're saying no one uses the service, yet they are running out of money paying theaters for tickets. LOGIC FAIL.

As of March 2018, there were 2 MILLION subscribers.
Rating: 4 Votes
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unobtainium
3 weeks ago
The plunge in Facebook’s stock price, the MoviePass debacle, it’s all starting to feel a little like the bubble is preparing to burst. Half these companies never turn a profit - Uber, Lyft, Spotify, Twitter, Snapchat, etc. etc. Yet they have billion dollar valuations. The market is totally overheated right now imo. Watch for a crash within a year.
Rating: 4 Votes
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MacLawyer
3 weeks ago
Stick a fork in them.
Rating: 4 Votes
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ActionableMango
3 weeks ago


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.


What shocked me was the revelation that the average subscriber only got 1.7 tickets per month. It means for every person bragging about really making hard use of it (getting like 15 to 25 tickets a month), there were a dozen or so subscribers paying the fee but not getting a single ticket.

So really the plan is more like 'buy something at full retail price, sell it for less' combined with 'collect money for a service that people don't actually use'.

It makes me wonder, if they just found a way to reign in the heaviest users, maybe it might have been a lot closer than people thought. The obvious trick would be to do something like the cellular companies do, where they say it's "unlimited" in the marketing, but then find loopholes to stop the 1% heaviest users.
Rating: 3 Votes
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