MoviePass keeps plan at $10, but limits subscribers to three movies a month | Hacker News Reader

MoviePass keeps plan at $10, but limits subscribers to three movies a month

techcrunch.com

109 pointssahin170 comments

I see a lot of people saying that $10 for 3 movies/month still sounds like a pretty good deal. It might be, but there are loads of other issues that make it more expensive and less useable:

- They recently added surcharges for what they call "peak pricing". When I looked at showtimes a couple Sundays ago, every showing after 10:00am had a $6-$8 surcharge.

- Some showtimes just aren't available. After seeing all those surcharges, I tried again the next day. There were no extra fees, but the showings between 6pm and 8pm were not shown in the app. And this was for non-blockbusters that have been out for 2-4 weeks.

- Their CEO has said (in a way that hasn't really been communicated to users) that they're no longer going to offer tickets for new mainstream movies. It's not at all clear which movies will be included.

- The service has gone down a couple times in the last couple of weeks because they ran out of money to pay for tickets. There's no way to know ahead of time if the app will actually work when you get to the theater (and you can't buy tickets before then unless you go to the theater earlier on the same day).

So, it's not $10/month for 3 movies. It's $10/month for 3 movies, excluding new films, with likely surcharges on weekends and many convenient showtimes blacked out. Also, sometimes it doesn't work.

Read the article.

> The company says the newly updated plans will include “many” major first run films from studios, wording that appears to confirm MoviePass’ plans to limit access to certain blockbusters, a trend that began with the latest Mission: Impossible film. For the time being, however, it’s agreed to suspend Peak Pricing and Ticket Verification to help appease existing users who are migrated over to the new plan.

To me it sounds they're removing peak pricing and being more conscious about restricting movies.

> To me it sounds they're removing peak pricing and being more conscious about restricting movies.

Until they aren't. MoviePass changes the deal way too often to have any certainty except about one thing: the deal gets worse all the time. As a customer, you have to try and guess what the value prop is going to be later on after the next round of changes.

Agreed, it's a bit too involved for a solution that's meant to be all about not worrying with paying for tickets. I just wanted to point out that some of his complaints were addressed in the article. It felt like a comment complaining about moviepass without actually reading the article.

I personally don't have any interest in movie theaters, I'll wait for the home formats, thanks.

The AMC Stubs A-list plan seems better to me in that there is a price cap (no peak pricing), and it works for IMAX and 3D movies:

> See up to 3 movies every week in IMAX®, Dolby Cinema, RealD® 3D, digital and more for just $19.95/month (+tax).

https://www.amctheatres.com/amcstubs/alist

it is, except its only AMCs. If one lives in the bay area (especially the peninsula / south bay, for example), the AMCs show a very limited set of movies. If all one is interested is movies in wide release, that's fine.

Do remember that AMC Stubs, exist because of moviepass. Not because they want to save us money. So we need movie pass to continue to exist so that its too late to put the cat out of the bag.

The cat IS out of the bag. If this is a profitable model for AMC, they'll maintain it without considering Moviepass.

Also, AMC is in a better position to continue to profit from the service model than Moviepass ever was. While Moviepass experimented with getting a slice of concession sales, they had no way to enforce that, whereas AMC already has control of the concession sales.

Plenty of equivalent moviehouse subscription services exist in Europe without Moviepass 'pressure'

It's almost as if someone wanted turn burn a few billion to verify the economic model that dictates current movie ticket prices. IOW, with the new restrictions, it sounds a lot like the "dollar cinema" we had growing up: for a dollar, you can watch 2nd-run movies. Lot's of restrictions around that, too. Usually only one movie showing at a particular cinema, showings are usually only in the evening, etc. But, because first-run movies are priced as they are for some good reasons, to make it cheaper there were some corners cut.

But I didn't need billions in VC money to come up with that one my own when I was 16 and watching the first Friday the 13th for $1.

I might be uneducated about the issue as a whole, but I don't really see the negative side to this service.

$10/month for 3 viewings per month. That's 3 movies for the price of 0.76 movies where I'm from (last time I went tickets were $13). Then, after you hit that cap, extra viewings are $5 less per ticket which has to be less than any one movie ticket for any new feature anywhere in America. Am I missing something? Are they just getting hate because they lacked foresight in the beginning? Is it because they gambled with investor money on a ridiculous business model? I have a genuine curiosity around where the hate is coming from.

I don't like going to movie theaters but if I did I would think this was a great deal.

EDIT: to correct the misinformation that each additional ticket was $5

It is a great deal. The problem is that MoviePass persisted for so long with a model that made no financial sense whatsoever, and now their customers have gotten used to it. There's no way to sell this as anything other than a giant downgrade.

> MoviePass persisted for so long with a model that made no financial sense whatsoever

You can say that about almost every start up discussed on HN

That's not really true. MoviePass is an outlier in its crazy business model that loses money on every customer. Most other start-ups just have high cap ex but make marginal profits per sale.

Funny enough I worked at a ecommerce clothing “startup” that had upwards of $75 million in sales but wasn’t profitable

...how? What was the game plan? Why would they do this?

Happened all the time in the dotcom bubble:

"We lose money on each sale but we'll make it up in volume!"

Having started my career at the start of the dot-com boom (and later bust), that was damn near every startup I came across.

Our little agency ended up moving into eTour's space in Atlanta (VaHi) when they departed. Nice movie theatre built into the space.

Customer acquisition? In some cases it might make financial sense to lose a small amount of money per customer if the cost per acquisition is more than the amount they're losing.

Network effect? I'm not sure this would apply to a clothing retailer, but there are lots of services out there that have a marginal cost per customer but can't effectively monetize until they have a sufficiently large customer base and therefore have access to enough data to be marketable.

Exit strategy? A company with x million customers, even if unprofitable and unsustainable in its current state, is worth more than a company with x/n customers that is marginally profitable in many cases.

As for this case in particular... I don't know. I suspect that a case could be made that the money they're losing has them in the media enough that they're basically paying for advertising by being unprofitable. I doubt I would have ever heard of MoviePass if not for them being constantly in the news.

The CLTV is high in fashion - people return to shops they like over and over. If they're in high growth, they're spending a lot in marketing to get new customers acquainted with the brand.

Facebook wasn't profitable until what, like year 8 of their existence?

Similarly SpaceX now is being awarded more than 50% of all commercial space launches, but burned money in the beginning.

SpaceX is trying to develop a new kind of rocket, with insane upfront R&D costs.

MoviePass is trying to sell movie tickets for less than they paid for them.

I don't think those are similar at all.

This is facially true. But I don't think MoviePass would describe their service this way. They would say they are gathering unprecedented amounts of personal data about movie preferences, which can be worth millions to movie studios and TV production companies that want to know what type of content will attract viewers. Framed this way, it is more understandable that they would need to burn cash in order to get the ball rolling on data collection.

Still, it's not rocket science and probably could have been done much more cheaply (just offering subscription coupons or something).

is said personal data harvesting going to be worth multiple dollars per movie somebody watches?

somehow i doubt it.

SpaceX lost money on R&D, they didnt lose money on the launch itself. i.e. every actual customer increased the money in their bank account.

I recall Jet.com (now owned by Walmart) tried to meet to meet or beat Amazon prices without the efficiencies of Amazon. So it was burning through VC capital losing money on most sales. I dont know if the model have changed under Walmart.

It's not about profitabity. It's about marginal revenue per usage.

If amazon initially dropped ship books to you that they ordered from Borders for $12 and sold to you for $10, they would have gone bankrupt. Amazon generally made money on each individual order.

Planet Fitness isn't burning money every time you go into their gyms.

MoviePass assets decrease every single time any user makes use of them. AMC A-List can possibly survive, MoviePass can't as is.

MoviePass has to demonstrate a model where the marginal revenue per usage is > 0 or that the total cost of a user is easily managable to be under their monthly subscription cost. I'm not convinced either are possible.

I'm a happier customer because I know what I'm getting and have seen 100+ movies on my costco annual subscription, but have zero expectations for them to survive.

Let me try....

"We know you're bummed, but you've gotten a great deal from us in the past. We continue to offer a great deal, one that is sustainable enough that we can continue to offer you great deals in the future.

Thank you for your understanding -- go see some great movies!

Love,

MoviePass "

Just playing devil's advocate...

"Why did you offer me a service that was unsustainable in the first place? I just want the keep paying the same for the same product you've sold me for the last x months."

Why did you sign up to an unsustainable service in the first place? It's not a big deal if they change the price. Pay up or leave, I don't see any problem here at all. In the UK phone companies are allowed to raise prices during the duration of a fixed price fixed duration contract.

As an end-user, am I responsible when you create a business with an unsustainable business plan? I think even the most educated consumer would look at that and think "great deal to be gotten while I can".

Moviepass probably shouldn't have any right to complain if they lose users, but users should definitely complain because they are being screwed, at least until the new plan becomes the new normal.

How are you being screwed?

Moviepass has changed the terms of the original agreement when signing up with the service. Just because they can do so and legally doesn't make it any less of a screwing. Just a legal one.

You can cancel. They're letting you know.

Just because they can do so and legally doesn't make it any less of a screwing.

I'm pretty sure you can legally ask them to pull out at any time, especially if contract terms have changed. They must have a cancellation procedure (that I'm sure is quick and easy /s).

I don't see how this is any different from, for instance, AT&T changing their rate plans on a regular basis and charging more for tethered data (which used to be included), or Cox instituting a data cap and charging $50 to remove it (which used to not exist).

Lots of businesses run on a subscription model, and lots of those change their subscription plans with no grandfathering.

Yeah, and it's a crap customer experience imo. You're lured in with an attractive starting offer only for the company to change the deal after you've signed up. Maybe im just being overly optimistic in thinking it'd be nice if companies would just sell me their product/service at some sustainable, relatively stable rate?

It happens a lot with car insurance companies in the UK. They start you off with a low quote for your first year then when the renewal comes around suddenly the price doubles. Then you phone them up, tell them about how you found another quote for half the price and magically they can halve the renewal quote they gave you just last week.

The difference is movie pass is changing the rules every month or more.

"If we were to continue offer our product at that price, MoviePass would be no more within a month, and we couldn't bring you movies at any price. We continue to offer great movies at an exceptional price, and look forward to working with you for years to come.

Love,

MoviePass "

The model still makes no financial sense. This reduces their burn rate by pushing away their most costly customers, but it doesn't address the underlying problem. MoviePass isn't creating value. Subscribers might receive positive value from the service, but all that value is simply payments from investors to use the service.

The idea has always been acquiring lots of customers (essentially by gifts) and then being able to negotiate hard with cinemas on that basis.

But cinemas are hardly a monopoly-- so there really is no room for the price to go down. They are presumably already operating at long run minimum average cost, which is equal to price, and there's zero economic profit being made. I would guess that if a service like MoviePass can exist it's because it's increasing efficiency in some non-obvious way, like reducing transaction costs or enhancing advertising.

In 2017 AMC made 5 billion in revenue and took home 500M in cash. I would say they are doing just fine.

https://www.nasdaq.com/symbol/amc/financials?query=cash-flow

I would disagree that movie theaters are hardly a monopoly. You usually only have one in a given geographical area. In a major metro you may have more options within a short distance but even then they are usually not walking distance from one another. And even if there are multiple options in same locale they may be same company and still a local monopoly. For example in Chicago, there are 4 movie theaters in downtown area, 3 of them AMC.

>In 2017 AMC made 5 billion in revenue and took home 500M in cash. I would say they are doing just fine.

That's why I was careful to say "economic profit". On the books numbers are all well and good. But the only indicator I'll take as a sure sign that an industry is profitable in the economic sense is if the number of firms in the market is climbing (i.e. new people are scrambling to get in on whatever benefits they perceive there are to being on the supply side of the market). And movie theaters seem to be more or less in an equilibrium to me.

Isn't that definition a bit flawed? By this logic, wouldn't Google's search product and their industry be economically unprofitable? The number of search firms is not climbing (in fact its dropping) but Google's search business makes lots of profit (and growing).

Your counter-example describes profit/growth due to monopoly.

Perhaps the parent meant a distinct defintion, for a competitive industry.

In a world of perfect competition you'd be correct. The airline business is close enough to that ideal, that little profits are made. But the reality of the Cinema business in the US is they make healthy profits.

On concessions, not on the movie tickets. Most of the price of a movie ticket goes to the studio/distributor for the first month. By the time the theater takes >50% of the price of the ticket, the audience has dropped to the low single-digits per showing.

The MoviePass customers that most used the service (aka >3 movies a month) were also the ones least likely to buy concessions. Thus, theaters had no incentive to give MoviePass a share of their gross (meaning total) concessions revenue in lieu for increased ticket revenue.

yes/no. I used to never buy concessions. spending an additional $5-$10 on top of my $15 ticket wasn't something i was willing to do.

However, if my marginal cost to see the movie is $0, it turns out I was willing to spend $5 or so every so often to get something to munch on during the movie.

While I haven't spent a huge amount on concessions, I've probably spent more on concessions in the 6 months I've had moviepass than in the combined 30+ years preceding it.

The theaters have access to lots of data on their moviegoers, especially through their rewards programs. Way more than what MoviePass has. If the data showed that MoviePass members were more likely to buy concessions to the extent that it affected the bottom line in a material way, right now we would all be feting MoviePass for its daring-do and forward thinking as it announces yet another theater partnership, instead of discussing its impending demise.

why? Do you not think AMC created a competing program for this vary reason.

They were planning a synergistic business model to market other businesses when you go to the movies. We hope you enjoyed your movie. Stop by Paulys Pizza next door for $2 slices.

Movie theaters already have that, it's called in-theater advertising, which nearby synergistic businesses have the greatest incentive to participate in (and create movie patron offers, sometimes in partnership with the theater, to promote in the ads), and do.

There's no need for the middle man.

That has yet to materialize. This move also would make that even less likely to ever come to fruition. The total MoviePass audience is now going to be strictly limited which removes most of the upside for theaters or distributors to negotiate with MoviePass.

Which might have worked, if they had targeted a geographic domain where their funding would give them sufficient runway to price low enough and advertise hard enough, for long enough, to essentially control the market.

“The whole United States” was far too broad of a market for them to be able to afford to make enough of an impact. They should probably have initially targeted a single metro market.

But they couldn't do it in the market they did target with the deal they had been offering, and targeting the same market with a worse deal may leave them solvent longer but it won't lead them to the kind of dominance they need to force theaters to the table.

> so long with a model that made no financial

The radical $9.95 model is just under a year old (11 months 22 days). I thought I would mention that because although MoviePass is much older, most folks only learned about it with the acquisition by Helios and Matheson and the subsequent drop in pricing which led to a surge of registrations.

Honestly, they should have just capped the registrations. I think a gym-membership style could have actually worked for them. I was an excited evangelist and early adopter, but I quickly found myself not seeing more than one movie a month if at all. Just like all the gym memberships out there that rely on you signing up and then not coming back regularly.

No, the comparison doesn’t work. Gyms count on going to the gym being something people have to force themselves to do, and so often fail to do so. Seeing movies is different: it’s a fun activity people want to do.

Additionally, I assume gyms are still profitable even if all of their members are making regular use of the service. The marginal cost of a single customer use is negligible. MoviePass cannot say the same.

It's a great deal and it's still going to bankrupt the company.

If I sent you $30 a month and you sent me $10 a month, that's a great deal for you, but how long can I do it?

They probably think this works like gyms,

"I should go more to the movies"

then people don't go after some months but keep the subscription.

Gyms have high fixed costs and low marginal costs. You don't cost them very much money every time you go.

Isn't the same true of movies?

(On the other hand, I'm pretty sure more people skip going to the gym than skip going to a movie!)

It's true of movie theaters. It's not true of people buying tickets at retail (which is what MoviePass is doing).

Source: I run a SaaS business for gyms and have spent 1000+ hours talking to gym owners about their priorities...

You do cost the gym money every time you go. But only after a certain point (anything more than light use) and if you go at peak times.

Basically, the space you take up at peak time is another membership they can't sell because of potential overcrowding.

> Basically, the space you take up at peak time is another membership they can't sell because of potential overcrowding.

Is that really a thing? I've _never- found a gym that has said "no sorry, we can't sell you a membership because we're full"

I’ve definitely tried out a gym and not joined because it was too crowded when I wanted to go

I've canceled a gym membership because it was too crowded at the times I wanted to go.

Yeah, except that this is a gym that you can only go to 3 times a month. So much more likely it will be used.

It's a good deal if viewed as a completely new product. The potential customer base probably doesn't overlap all that much with their previous customer base.

There's some irony that it's called MoviePass still despite not... really being that at all now. They should have rebranded and maybe it would have gone over better.

Despite being a good deal I'm skeptical that the offering is large enough to warranty the effort required to use the service. There's a market for it, likely, but I doubt there's one that will satisfy the investment.

I'd guess the current-and-previous customer base overlap is approaching 100%. If you want to see 1, 3, 31, or 100+ movies a month, it's still appears to be a great deal.

I think the hate comes from the frequent changes to the way the program works. Customers feel like it's a bait and switch, even if it's because their model hasn't been sustainable.

It is a bait and switch. You can't just tell customers "you should have known that this deal was too good to be sustainable". It's your job as a business to figure out if you can afford to deliver what you are selling before you sell it, not afterwards.

The purchasing service has been completely offline frequently in the past two weeks, which you don’t find out until you are at the theater. Not only that, they introduced “peak” pricing that was on basically every movie, so not really peak, just a surcharge on everything. Then they decided to start removing movies from the list of purchasable at random times throughout the day, so you could get to the theater and not be able to use it.

If it was just three movies for 10 it’d be a great deal, but the constant flux of being able to use it is awful.

I agree with all your points but as an aside tickets where I currently live are $5 before 6pm or $5 with a student ID (held on to college one) anytime. Moviepass still would be a deal here.

FTA: “up to a $5.00 discount for any additional movie tickets.”

That's not the same as $5/ticket.

Definitely read that wrong, thanks for the correction!

There's a lot of hurdles involved with actually using the service -- many movies are explicitly unavailable, eligible screenings of available movies are very limited (only two showings per movie for the entire day this weekend for me, only between 4-7pm), and the main hassle of not being able to buy multiple seats at once or in advance.

While they're removing most of the most negative changes ('peak pricing' and the pointless 'take a picture of your ticket stub') for people who remain subscribed (pray they don't alter it any further), they're keeping their arbitrary blackouts of popular movies, which kills it for me. If I have to drive to the theatre to then get there and discover that MoviePass has decided I'm not allowed to see Movie X then I'm going to stop using it.

Currently they implement these blackouts either nationwide (you can't see Mission Impossible on MoviePass at all) or regionally, with showtimes vanishing from the app without warning after too many people elsewhere in your region buy tickets to the movie in question.

The problem with the service is inconsistency and never knowing if you'll actually be able to see a movie or not.

Also, if you were foolish enough to buy an annual subscription, then you don't get the limitation but you still have had your deal altered with movie blackouts and stub verification.

" If I have to drive to the theatre to then get there and discover that MoviePass has decided I'm not allowed to see Movie X then I'm going to stop using it."

Don't they have the app that shows you want movies you can see?

Yes, but they aren't integrated with most theaters' systems, meaning you often show up and find out the movie you were planning to see is sold out.

Yes, but the availability is not set when you open the app, it isn't set until you check-in, which you can't do until you get to theatre.

If you live a 20-minute drive from the theatre... You open the app at home, see your movie listed, then drive there. It is quite possible that by the time you get there MP has decided you can't watch that movie anymore.

There's no way to work around this and it makes the service basically unusable.

this is why gps spoofing should come as a feature, to prevent apps from doing this sort of baiting of users.

> I might be uneducated about the issue as a whole, but I don't really see the negative side to this service.

Two negatives:

(1) its worse than what they've gotten existing customers used to, and

(2) if they weren't able to capture enough of the market with the old deal to bring theaters to the table, they certainly won't with the new deal, which is still unsustainable without that leverage.

They'll die more slowly this way, but it's not a route to a viable service.

this seems to be the crux, everyone is saying how "this model is more sustainable" but as you pointed out, no, it absolutely isn't. without discounts from theaters moviepass can't survive and for the last year theaters have shown they don't need to offer those discounts.

New features playing early on Sat and Sunday are $4-6 in Springfield, IL at an AMC. I haven't seen a feature at night in a very long time.

> but I don't really see the negative side to this service.

1. They have changed the terms out from under their customers. Some pre-paid for a year of service.

2. They continually show movies as "prime time" when they really just aren't. Movies in empty theaters at 10 am going for full price.

3. Go check their twitter feed. They have had _numerous_ issues lately. People aren't getting what they were promised when they opened their checkbooks.

New plan gets rid of peak pricing and ticket validation. Their biggest problem is just how awful their customer support is.

Hard to trust these guys right now, we'll see. Between constant plan changes and movies just disappearing from the app (see twitter), who knows where they'll be in a week.

Seriously, my app hasn't showed anything all week but I'm also a pretty heavy user so I wouldn't be surprised if they're doing something fishy with that

I think the negative side is: the rules fluctuate, the service is intermittent and there's no reason to trust them anymore.

I know a pass holder who was turned away at the theater when they ran out of money a couple of weeks ago. Now the service they are already paying for has been downgraded.

Why would you trust them at this point?

I was turned away at a theater early this year when they tried to strongarm AMC by denying customer access to the top 10 AMC theaters.

I love going to movies, but I don't love struggling to fit a company's now constantly shifting criteria -- especially when I have higher priority time consuming hobbies that don't leave much in the way of flexibility.

> Are they just getting hate because they lacked foresight in the beginning? Is it because they gambled with investor money on a ridiculous business model?

For me, both.

I want to live in a world where companies succeed by identifying a need and then providing a service/product that fills that need.

Not by taking investor money, using it to subsidize the cost of an existing service (essentially buying users), and then praying that a business model or exit offer appears after the users do but before their weight collapses the company's tenuous structure.

At the moment, Google is displaying MoviePass's parent company's market cap as only $189K [1]. Yahoo Finance is showing an even lower number, $141K [2]. If these numbers are accurate, that's pretty astounding -- if you buy $2000 of shares on the public market, you'd own over 1% of the company!

That said, I can't imagine they're actually correct, given the share volumes changing hands. Finance apps seem to have trouble with stock splits, share buybacks, post-IPO equity offerings and the like... is there no good data source for number of shares outstanding of a company?

[1] https://www.google.com/search?q=NASDAQ:HMNY

[2] https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/HMNY?p=HMNY

Bloomberg shows it as 542K, which I believe is fairly accurate.

Its also a fantastic way to lose $2000.

This company is dead, no questions about it.

It would be a fantastic gamble. With gambling comes the chance to lose a lot of money, but also a small chance to win a lot of money.

I currently own around 2500 shares of HMNY, and it is a 100% gamble. I'm hoping someone better acquires them, or they bring in a better management team. But I dropped a total of $450 on these shares, so if I make $500, my gamble paid off.

This company isn't invest-able, but it is gamble-able.

You won't be able to buy $2000 worth of HMNY without driving the price up (EDIT: maybe not, at 350MM shares traded as of this morning; who the hell is trading this turd?). Then when reality kicks in and the price drops back down, you're sitting on shares even more worthless than they were today at $0.06. I mean, if you think you can turn it around, go for it. Some folks on HN could pay for it out of petty cash.

One thing I am struggling to understand is why MoviePass is paying theaters full price for tickets, essentially needing to take on the same economics as an insurance company.

If I'm a theater, I'm incentivized to put butts in seats and make my markup on concessions. If MoviePass is helping to put lots of butts in otherwise empty seats, I imagine I'd be willing to provide tickets to MoviePass at a discounted rate. I'm not sure how much that helps MoviePass's bottom line, but my initial guess is that it would be nontrivial.

What don't I understand about the incentives and economics here?

Because the theaters don't need MoviePass to offer discounts? They can offer discounts directly to the consumers. MoviePass is an intermediary to the transaction that offers no value and tries to consume value.

> They can offer discounts directly to the consumers.

I offer discount at my company, will you takes it? Why no one is taking it? Marketing is the reason. It's great to have a discount but at the end of the day, you still need to promote that discount. Promoting to a market that's not yours, a market that you don't know and you don't even want to deal with (cheap ass consumer), doesn't make sense. MoviePass is the king of cheap ass market, they know how to reach them, they know how to make money out of them and you literally have NOTHING to invest to get that market. That's the value of MoviePass. You just take their client...

I don’t know about the US, but I talked with a someone who runs a cinema in Germany and he said that for example Disney dictates the prices, leaving him with small margins. This is also the reason why they have to sell a certain amount of drinks and popcorn (at a high price point) to stay afloat.

If they continue like this cinemas will just die out.

My local cinema however is offering a "Sneak Preview" on Mondays. For 5€ you get to see some (unknown on ticket purchase) new movie that people have actually put some effort into (non "block busters", a.k.a. transformers part 500). There I have seen Shape of Water, Hotel Artemis and Searching. I will see another one this evening.

With adaptions like these maybe they'll survive a bit longer. I certainly enjoy the offering.

And Cinestar shows you a solid 25 minutes of ads before each film, in addition to the aggressive snack marketing including an intermission during long films.

Seriously the only time I watch movies is as a two-week binge during the Berlinale; the experience in Germany is completely unbearable otherwise.

It's way more complex than that. Firstly:

* MoviePass isn't putting butts in empty seats - look at all their problems, their problem is that they're selling out on blockbusters and weekends. So a lot of the revenue theatres are getting is just displaced. There's really no reason to think that a MoviePass customer is seeing more low demand movies. Think about it this way: A Theatre could drop the prices on their older flicks to get more butts in seats today, but they don't. What's the logical difference between that and doing it for MoviePass?

* Secondly, Theatres don't make their money the way you expect - up to 100% of a blockbuster's ticket sales go to the studio and the theatre is contractually limited in the prices they can charge. So even if the theatres wanted to make a deal, they can't!

* Thirdly, which business on earth wants to let a middle man in? If MoviePass reaches critical mass it can turn around and say 'We're dropping you from our list of supported theatres unless you cut us in 20%' - and you'll have to agree because they aren't your customers anymore, they're MoviePass customers.

I'm sure they've done the math and realized that the incentive doesn't line up. They explicitly stressed in earnings calls that they have no plan whatsoever to share concessions or ticket revenue with third parties like MoviePass. I imagine they expect to crush moviepass with A-List

Based on a few[0] articles[1], theaters only receive a small portion of box office sales for the first few weeks. Studios would likely still ask for a regular ticket's cut if the theatre sold a ticket for less to moviepass.

0: https://www.nytimes.com/1987/01/28/movies/where-movie-ticket... 1: https://money.cnn.com/2002/03/08/smbusiness/q_movies/

I bet letting people go to whatever movie they prefer means they are mostly going to top run movies instead of older ones which have more availability. There's probably some overlap there if you go to 5-6 movies per month, but I bet those cases are rare.

> One thing I am struggling to understand is why MoviePass is paying theaters full price for tickets

Because they a hostile outside party seeking leverage over theaters to extract some of the profits that the theaters currently earn.

> If I'm a theater, I'm incentivized to put butts in seats and make my markup on concessions.

If that was the case, theaters would just have lower prices on direct sales of the seats at issue.

I've always used and now plan to stick with Sinemia. Advanced ticketing through any online site like Fandango, works at any theater, works for 3D/4DX/IMAX/premium formats. It's still limited to 3 movies a month but for the price and all these "better" features it's definitely worth it for me and the girlfriend.

Here's the thing though, Sinemia stuck with these features and pricing model from the start so it made sense financially for them and was still a great deal.

At this point MoviePass seems like they're clinging for life and all my peers on their plan express frustration every time these frequent changes occur. I'd like to link my referral code but I think their own signup offerings are better -

Sinemia is so much better it's insane!

I feel bad for my friends when we go to movies and they use MoviePass. Seems like they have so many restrictions, whereas I can just buy tix online whenever to _any_ showing.

Yeah, this service is going to disappear. They might have a few months of runway left, getting picked up by a few investments, but I don't see them surviving this downfall.

For sure, you can't slash your offering by 90% while keeping the price the same and survive.

A business always needs to keep in mind exactly what it is that they are offering their customers. MoviePass offered their customers the ability to not have to think about budgeting for movies.

Now that that's gone, what is this service, exactly? A discounted pre-payment for 3 movies? MoviePass is now a coupon.

If I pay $10 a month and see 3 movies that are normally $11 apiece (local tickets are $10.75), that's a pretty clear value proposition. How can you ask what the service is with a straight face? Are you honestly implying that if I have to think at all, a 200% return on my money isn't good enough?

I don't really understand anyone who would even care that much about this change. I can barely find time to go to the theater 3 times a month let alone more. The changes that limit the most popular movies were much worse, honestly.

I don't think they are going to last, because even with this reduced offering I don't see how an outlay of $33 for a $10 subscription works. As long as I see at least one movie a month using the service I more than break even though, so I'll stay subscribed month to month until they go under.

> 200% return on my money

You aren't getting a "return" on anything.

When you pull the old "I am altering the deal. Pray I don't alter it any further." routine every few weeks, just being a moderately good deal isn't good enough because you can't trust that you will actually get the deal that they say they are offering.

I completely agree with you. But all these signs of MoviePass altering their offering again and again just points to them being headless and in "survival mode", trying to find anything that can keep them afloat. From the outside, it just seems like it's not profitable at all to let subscribers pay $10 and give them $33 of value (earlier it was a lot more for some outliers) back. That just can't work longterm. I wonder what their longterm goals look like, how are they going to make their money back? What's the plan for that?

While it was a great deal, I don't like to use services that change the rules every 24 hours, so I canceled my subscription.

That's why I cancelled mine too. I am grateful to them for pouring millions of dollars into letting people see more movies, and proving that people really are interested in seeing movies if only they were less overpriced. AMC at least got the message and is starting their own subscription service. Hopefully other theaters will take notice.

This is why I haven’t even bothered to sign up, as much as I love going to the movies. I don’t really want to spend money on something that may not be worth as much the following day. I’m pretty sure that’s just called investing.

Why not just cancel it when the terms become unfavourable? You're just losing out this way.

I don’t get it. It’s still a great deal, unless the deal is a net negative to you why do you care? You must see that the initial deal was too generous and unsustainable right?

Some days it's a great deal. Some days they don't let you see the movie you wanted, or you have to pay 8 extra dollars, or they run out of money and half of the methods of buying tickets stop working. Each with less than 24 hours notice.

Yeah it's unsustainable and I was planning to unsubscribe when they raised their prices. Instead I cancelled when they started jerking users around. Well, after the 3rd or 4th time.

I switched from MoviePass last week to AMC's MoviePass rebuttal, called AMC A-List. The AMC program is $20/month, for three movies a week, in any format, with online advanced-booking. With this change, I don't see why MoviePass subscribers would not just switch to A-List if their main theatre is an AMC.

Perhaps because it's twice the price.

Yes, although among my circles of MoviePass-using friends, many had been paying over $20/month recently with various MoviePass upcharges. And MoviePass also still doesn't allow movies that haven't been in the theatres for at least two weeks, no formats other than standard, and annoying $4 surge charges for some showings.

Twice the price for four times as many movies, without blackouts, but only from one theater chain.

And there's a better chance that the rules won't change next week.

Yeah but you actually get to see movies you want to see... lately this is looking a hell of a lot cheaper than MoviePass' "pay us $10 to see nothing" offering.

Stubs A-List is leaps and bounds better than moviepass, the extra $10 is really negligible as well. Being able to book seats days in advance through an app that isn't actively trying to screw you over with GPS limitations is just so nice. The cost of one imax ticket at the metreon more than covers A-List too. It's really a great deal.

Once MoviePass goes fully defunct, why would AMC continue to offer A-List?

Well, either it makes them money to offer it, or it doesn't. If it doesn't, then MoviePass is even a less viable business than everyone had thought.

I don't understand why they did not also raise the cost to something like $15 a month. $10 was too low in my opinion. I assumed they might increase it to $15 sometime later, which is still a good deal for consumers, if you consider the average cost to be $9

Where do you live that the average cost of a movie ticket is only $9? I’ve seen tickets fully twice that expensive at AMCs in San Francisco.

I hope you know San Francisco is an expensive place

$18 at the Regal near me for "RPX" (aka premium times) in Chicago.

I live somewhere much cheaper than SF, and tickets are regularly £10-£11 (which is about $15 give or take)

But Movie Pass charges the same amount no matter where you live so you'd expect it to be much more popular in expensive places. It would be challenging to come up with a worse business model than Movie Pass.

Try small towns, college towns, middle of nowhere.

> “Because only 15 percent of MoviePass members see four or more movies a month, we expect that the new subscription model will have no impact whatsoever on over 85 percent of our subscribers.”

Is it the same 15% seeing 4 movies a month? I suspect not.

I don't understand why MoviePass doesn't just close up shop. Their popularity stemmed from selling a dollar for 50 cents. There is no business here, they should quit while they are behind.

Arrogance.

In the threads about privacy, it is common to read some comments that propose to exchange your information for some benefit. MoviePass indicates that this is not as easy as it seems.

I cancelled this weekend: surcharge for a two-week old not-exactly-blockbuster was annoying, but meh.

On Saturday, the app listed a theater showing something I wanted to see, I drove there, and then... couldn't check in and was no longer listed when I refreshed the theater.

I'd expect them to keep playing this kind of game.

The price seems fine, I'd be happy with it. The problem I have is the amount of tracking they're apparently doing. That's the bit that makes me not use the service (not that I can in my country, but my point still stands).

This is fine. There's barely 3 good movies released per month .

I don’t watch movies, so i don’t demand characteristics, but why not have several tiers at diff price points?

If their business model relies on people paying but not going (a business model some gyms use) they want the low-attending people on the most expensive plan possible.

Offering cheaper tiers would prevent that.

I bought a yearly 70ish dollar package from them and I feel like I've been robbed of the product that I paid upfront for. However I've seen 25ish movies with my movie pass so I guess I've made my money back but it's still very frustrating. Their CS is so poor too.

You feel robbed that you saw around 25 movies for less than $3 each?

I felt robbed that I paid for a product and then the product I received was different than what I paid for. A lot of the 25 movies I wouldnt actually have seen if I had to pay full price.

If I went to a restaurant and ordered a BLT, paid, and then a two slices of bread with bacon came out. I'd be disappointed even though I like bacon... I didnt receive what I paid upfront for. Even if I got something I will still feel like I was taken advantage of. Adding on the fast that when I would ask the waiter/waitress why I didnt receive what I paid for and a refund I'd be ignored...

Weird, it's almost like theaters were charging what they charge for actual reasons rather than "corporate greed".

Er... the actual cost of someone going to the theater is irrelevant here. The only cost that matters is what the theaters are charging since that is what MoviePass has to cover. If they can't cover that, they can't provide their service. It doesn't matter if the theater is charging $3 or $30 per ticket; if MoviePass cannot, at a bare minimum, cover that cost, they cannot continue their service. Which is what happened two weekends ago when their service was briefly shut down due to failed payments until they took out an emergency $5M loan to cover things.

> the actual cost of someone going to the theater is irrelevant here. The only cost that matters is what the theaters are charging since that is what MoviePass has to cover.

These two things are tied. A theater is not going to give a discount it can't give. The theaters will not sell a ticket at a loss just because MoviePass is asking for 100 tickets at a time.

MoviePass thought they could leverage being the source of a lot of sales into getting discounts from theater chains. But theaters are simply telling MoviePass that the prices are what they are. They make money elsewhere.

Investing more into MoviePass really seems like throwing good money after bad.

This sort of sarcasm obfuscates your message. Frankly I don’t understand what you’re trying to say. Surely it’s best to just come out and say it without the noncommittal “it’s almost as if” deflection.

MoviePass was an attempt to disrupt things. As with a lot of "disruption", it's based on delivering something cheaper to the consumer. They thought they understood the costs and how they could provide more for less, but then they ran into a lot of issues that the established players have already solved. Usually at a cost.

Another example is Uber. They're still losing money. And they've taken quite a few reputation hits as well. Mostly because they didn't fully understand or appreciate the cab business, which is what they essentially are. There's no one to screen drivers, so you have issues where drivers and passengers get in altercations at a greater frequency. Ride share drivers aren't required to actually know the area. And a host of other things that I'm sure I'm not aware of. And all those things do cost money. And those costs are included in the cab fares. Uber thought it could either circumvent those costs or were just ignorant of them.

MoviePass thought it could present a deal but make it up either in bulk or by resting on whales. Theaters hardly deal in "bulk", especially post facto. You can buy out a screen in advance and you can usually negotiate a deal, but you must buy out the entire screen. And MoviePass does not have the userbase to justify that. And the customers of MoviePass aren't "whales". The people buying MoviePass are people who would find $30 a month for access to a theater a deal. People who see more than 2 or 3 movies a month.

They went full underpants gnome on their business plan. I'm sure their step 2 was filled with convincing speeches and projections, but sometimes incredulity is the correct answer. "How do the plan on making money?" was something they apparently needed an answer for.

It was a horrible service in the beginning and it still is. It won't matter how much it changes hands. You cannot ask a customer to pay money, commit to a contract (they required this in the early days), and then limit their use in various ways.

In the beginning, you could see one movie per day which was great, but you couldn't share the account with your spouse, you couldn't use multiple devices, and you couldn't see the same movie twice if I am remembering correctly. And that was when it was $30/month (albeit a cheap price if able to take true advantage of the movie-watching).

And now they're changing the terms, seemingly on a weekly basis.

It has been a complete failure throughout its run. It's time for MoviePass to go away.

I find your message hilarious. Do you have better alternatives if you're calling this horrible?

Netflix

> 3.4. Changes to the Price and Subscription Plans. We reserve the right to change our subscription plans or adjust pricing for our service or any components thereof in any manner and at any time as we may determine in our sole and absolute discretion. Except as otherwise expressly provided for in these Terms of Use, any price changes or changes to your subscription plan will take effect following notice to you.

And there is a forced arbitration clause (and as much as I think those are a mockery of our legal system), this would seem to allow fairly substantial changes at any time.

Yeah, except for the fact that historically they have never pulled any crap approaching the ongoing drama that is MoviePass. The biggest shift I recall is the move to split the DVD/streaming services, which I think was completely reasonable.

I'm glad you find it hilarious. Does MoviePass have competition? If not, then of course I have no better alternative since they're the only ones in this space.

Better alternatives to what I laid out? Sure, restrict to, say, three devices so if I forget my main phone, I can use my work phone, or I can let my wife go see a movie from time to time, etc.

Feel free to pick everything apart, I'm simply speaking in terms of a subscription service being reasonable for usability. This is why it's always been horrible. And keep in mind, I paid for a one year contract at $30/mo for it, so it's not exactly armchair criticism.

The competition is always to not go see movies in theaters.

Theaters have just barely been holding on to my business for weekend matinees, between 0 and 2 times per month. I get that the movies-in-theaters industry seems ripe for disruption, but people are already doing that by not going [as frequently] any more.

It's nice that MoviePass is trying to throw a flotation ring to the theaters, but when I heard Disney was unilaterally upping its take from certain movies that it will be distributing, and pulling out of Netflix to pursue its own streaming service, I started looking for ways to replace certain elements of my entertainment. The industry itself is killing the golden goose, and I may just go back to reading fantasy novels by the shovelful, and trying out all those games I licensed on Steam/GOG/Humble and never played, and binge-watching niche shows on Netflix/Hulu that would have been canceled from regular television.

Buying a ticket directly from the theater?

It's not as cheap, but they won't change the deal on me after I have already paid them.

I find this argument confusing. Rationally, this is still more than 3 times cheaper than any theater. My goal isn't to take revenge on them but to spend my dollar wisely.

Stubs A-List through AMC.

That is cool. I don't know why they don't advertise that option more aggressively, even in the theater

Just about every other way of buying a ticket (either AMC A-List, Sinema, or even just buying a normal movie ticket the old fashioned way) offers a much better, and much more consistent experience.

Well MoviePass was competing on price, not on experience. Is that why people flock to MoviePass?

I do not fully understand your comment. This is an honest interpretation question:

1. MP cannot require a contract, then change the terms (e.g., raise price, limit frequency, etc.). While I understand the frustration it is likely legal. However (at least in the US), I believe the company has to either offer you the previous terms for the duration of the contract or an opportunity to terminate. I think it is the customer's choice, but IANAL.

2. If you are saying that all memberships must support unlimited use (which is how I read it first) this is insane, sorry.

1. Yes they did, I had it in 2013. They didn't change the terms at that time, like they're doing now.

2. I didn't say that at all. I would have simply liked to have shared it with my wife so she could go see a movie from time to time. I would have liked to have it tied to more than just one device in case I happened to have a different device on me (restriction can still be in place, but limited to, say, three devices).

It's all about usability for me. It was considerably unusable for anyone who isn't single and has a single device always.

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