MoviePass: Why It Failed and How It Will Live On
September 14th, 2019 marked the end of an era for many moviegoers. The company that once boasted a $10/month subscription to watch a movie a day in theaters shut down its services.
The website now shows a tragic message: “Over the past several months, MoviePass™ worked hard to relaunch its groundbreaking subscription service and recapitalize the company. While we were able to relaunch the service for some of our subscribers with an improved technology platform, our efforts to recapitalize the company have not been successful to date.”
But why did MoviePass fail?
In August 2017, MoviePass was sold to Helios and Matheson. The company slashed the monthly cost from $40 to a shocking $10 for its unlimited plan.
In summer 2018, a friend and I decided that we would give it a try. After all, we were college students with internships and nothing to do outside of work AND it was only $10. We had used MoviePass to watch Incredibles 2, which basically was worth the cost of the subscription.
The following week, we decided to watch Ant-Man and the Wasp. Again, great movie, totally worth $10, so the subscription made it essentially free.
Everything seemed so great and it seemed like MoviePass was a keeper. We even discussed the sustainability of the company, wondering how they kept the cost so low.
Eventually, we decided the only plausible solution was that they had partnerships with the movie theaters, since they were attracting customers to what was becoming a dying industry.
That wasn’t the case.
MoviePass had a struggling relationship with AMC, which ultimately led to a failing growth strategy. At one point, MoviePass had blocked AMC theaters from customers, and publicly blamed the chain.
On top of that war, MoviePass began limiting the number of movies that customers could watch to three per month, assuming they stayed on the $10 plan. They offered a higher tier plan, but it didn’t have the same appeal as the unlimited one.
Imagine if you bought an unlimited data plan and your phone carrier suddenly said, “Nevermind, you only have 10 GB a month”.
However, at that point, my friend and I decided that we were only watching around three a month anyway, so we could still give it a chance.
Then MoviePass announced that the premium movies and premium showtimes would cost a little bit extra. So our options were basically The Meg or The Spy Who Dumped Me. Seeing as we both do not like water anyway, The Meg was not really an option.
One night, we tried to go see The Spy Who Dumped Me, and we checked on the app to see that a non-premium showtime was available at a theater close by. When it came time to make the reservation, we opened our apps at dinner and saw that the showtime was no longer available.
That was the last straw. MoviePass went from being a limitless movie theater subscription to a waste of money since we could not use it to see any movie we wanted to. We canceled our subscriptions on the spot.
Nearly a year later, I got an email from MoviePass saying that the original unlimited plan was back for a select few customers, but I did not bother to rejoin. MoviePass had already failed me.
So then how will MoviePass live on?
The idea of an unlimited theater subscription caused a lot of buzz. Despite shutting down, MoviePass demonstrated that people wanted a cheap way of going to the theaters. They transformed the moviegoing industry.
Following the MoviePass business model, AMC later introduced the Stubs A-List subscription, where moviegoers could reserve up to three movies a week for a monthly price, varying by location.
On the company’s website, MoviePass claims that it “remained committed to leading and competing in an industry that is resistant to outside competition and change. [It] believe[s] that fostering competition and change in the moviegoing industry is critical to the satisfaction of the moviegoing public and filmmakers alike.”
What’s next for the moviegoing industry?
