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MoviePass Will Increase Price, Limit Availability of New Movies (theverge.com) 106

Posted by BeauHD from the nickel-and-dime dept.
After running out of money and shutting down for a night last week, the movie ticket subscription service MoviePass will increase its price to $14.95 a month within the next 30 days. Furthermore, "first-run movies will only be viewable on a limited basis during the first two weeks of release, unless the company has a promotional deal with a given film," reports The Verge. From the report: MoviePass' statement claims these changes are being made "to enhance discovery, and to drive attendance to smaller films and bolster the independent film community." In a widely reported all-hands meeting at the company, MoviePass CEO Mitch Lowe cited the upcoming Christopher Robin and The Meg specifically as films that would not be available to subscribers. More broadly, MoviePass hopes to make smarter decisions about potential partnerships with studios and brands in the hopes of turning a profit, though no specific details were shared at this time. This new price increase is in addition to the already-announced plan to implement surge pricing for popular movies.
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MoviePass Will Increase Price, Limit Availability of New Movies More

MoviePass Will Increase Price, Limit Availability of New Movies

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  • Marketing Firm (Score:5, Insightful)

    by spire3661 ( 1038968 ) on Wednesday August 01, 2018 @05:12AM (#57047606) Journal
    Its pretty clear MoviePass is jsut a marketing firm looking to get picked up by a big company. They have no plan, no warchest, nothing. All everyone has to do is wait them out and they can pick it up for pennies on the dollar if they want it. MoviePass is done.

    • Well, that's basically what happens now. Welcome to the Dutch Auction for Moviepass, make your offer when you run out of nerves.

    • It seems reasonable, if they can get people (who wouldn't normally go) into a theater to see a less popular movie at a discount, then basically everyone benefits. The "any movie" thing was just a hook to get people in, before scaling back and hoping people will stay. Eventually they WILL be able to reduce service levels to a point where they are profitable, the only question is if there will be enough customers who want to stay at that low level.
      • With their new pricing, I would have to see 4 shitty movies a month to "break even". This has to target areas with normally ridiculous pricing AND people willing to see a handful of non-blockbuster films a month.
        • Then by your analysis, they won't be able to find a balance that makes it work.

        • Re: (Score:1)

          by edx93 ( 4858619 )

          That really depends where you are. In metro regions like NYC, Boston, and I imagine, many others, the cost of one regular (i.e. not IMAX, 3D etc) ticket is $15-$20, and that excludes popcorn and soda. For me, I'd have to watch around 5 movies a *year* for it to pay itself. That said, there is no chance in hell that it'll last that even half as long.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by DrXym ( 126579 )
        It doesn't seem reasonable to me. Originally you could choose to watch any movie you liked. Now you can't. Now you get to watch all the dreck and not popular movies. Suddenly the service is far less attractive to people who might be inclined to watch movies.

        Secondly, why would people who are already disinclined to watch movies going to be interested in a subscription that compells them to watch movies to derive value from it? Especially now that the subscription only covers predominantly bad and/or unpopu

    • >Its pretty clear MoviePass is jsut a marketing firm"

      Well duh, what else could turn "We were stupid and now going bankrupt and need more money quickly before we die so we are going to raise prices and put even more limitations on what you can watch and how often you can use our services" into:

      'MoviePass' statement claims these changes are being made "to enhance discovery, and to drive attendance to smaller films and bolster the independent film community."'

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by msauve ( 701917 )
      "Its pretty clear MoviePass is jsut a marketing firm looking to get picked up by a big company. "

      With a current market cap of $1 million (for majority owner HMNY), why do you say "big company?"

    • All everyone has to do is wait them out and they can pick it up for pennies on the dollar if they want it.

      That time is close. The stock was trading at $2000 in January. Currently, it is trading at 55 cents... https://www.marketwatch.com/in... [marketwatch.com]

    • Its pretty clear MoviePass is jsut a marketing firm looking to get picked up by a big company. They have no plan, no warchest, nothing. All everyone has to do is wait them out and they can pick it up for pennies on the dollar if they want it. MoviePass is done.

      Well, it seems that they did have a plan. It just wasn't a very good one. Apparently the real plan was that they knew they would always lose money on the movie part of it, but they thought that the personal information that subscribers had to give up to buy the movie plan was worth so much money that they could make a fortune selling that information. That did not prove to be the case. Some stock market analysts have speculated that they may be able to turn a modest profit with these changes, but it pro

    • Mitch Lowe's previous gig was with a pennystock scam. It's all about selling stock.

    • I think the biggest issue was their business plan didn't account for how greedy their market is.
      They could had kept their old price and without restrictions if people went to movies a few weeks after the release, and used the money for concessions.
      But no they used it to go to the new Releases and didn't spend a dime on concessions. Making it a poor business model.

      The Original Netflix (Before Streaming) had control on what DVD they had and when to offer them, so their business plan worked well, because once

  • If they did that I'd go a lot more often. But why should I pay the ad-watching tax when I paid for a ticket?
    • Maybe someone needs to create an app that gives you the 'true' start time of a movie. So you can show up at the right time and not waste your time.

      • Maybe someone needs to create an app that gives you the 'true' start time of a movie. So you can show up at the right time and not waste your time.

        But that's the problem. I shouldn't have to do that.

        I should be able to walk into a theater at some designated time, the theater is quiet, the movie starts immediately at the designated time, I watch the movie, and when its done, I leave.

        But its never been like that. And it just keeps getting worse. And that's why my movie watching (in theaters) hit zero many years ago.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by Kjella ( 173770 )

          Honestly I've felt much less captive since I got a smartphone. The people who go as a crowd chit-chat. The singles check their phones. The good part is that it means 99% are there on time, if it really started on a minute's notice I know people would be pushing it right down to the wire with some arriving late ruining the first five minutes.

      • If you go to the movies often, you know how many minutes are ads and previews. In fact, as I have noticed pretty much everywhere, ads occur before the official starting time, and previews occur after tha official starting time. Locally, the Regal has 20 minutes of previews, and the Paragon has 10. Not sure about Marquee as I don't go to it that often, but I think its about 10.

        OTOH, I don't much mind what's going on on the screen as I am fine with paying attention to my phone right up to the start of t

  • I'm a big user of MoviePass (Score:5, Interesting)

    by davide marney ( 231845 ) on Wednesday August 01, 2018 @06:31AM (#57047848) Journal

    ...but it's fading. Not because MoviePass doesn't work or is even difficult to use -- it isn't -- but because once I started going to the movies more often, I realized that movies themselves are uniformly poor. In the past when I'd see a bad movie, I'd just chalk it up to bad chance. But now I see that pretty much the whole lot of them are just not that great, almost immediately forgettable. And rare indeed is a Hollywood-produced movie that is any good, in my experience. Independent film has a far better hit to loss ratio.

    The mission of MoviePass is to get people to new movies, and that was achieved very well in my case. I did watch a whole lot of new movies. Even with the upgraded price would still be a good deal, if the product was worth my time.

    • I feel the same about Hollywood, the last few years have seen a pretty disappointing crop of movies. Even the pointless blockbuster action movies that I used to enjoy are just so much meh these days.It's all reboots, remakes (did we really need a remake of "Overboard"?), superheroes getting ever more creative at smashing each other into buildings, ex-con-forced-to-do-one-last-job, Fast and Furious 163 (they probably made 2 more while I was typing this), and the small number of movies that actually have an

      • I dunno, maybe we're just getting older and these movies are being made for a younger crowd. Or for the growing Asian market.

        Well those marvel superhero movies and many of the action flicks are targeted at the under 30 crowd. That's not to say there aren't some over 30's that enjoy them- you're just not the target audience. Many of the big budget movies are targeted towards the age demographic that actually goes to movies... they're frequently, single and young and have disposable income.

        Older folk with kids and bills and so many other places tugging on their wallet don't get out to the cinema as much.

        So yes, if you're over 30,

    • Re:I'm a big user of MoviePass (Score:5, Interesting)

      by ledow ( 319597 ) on Wednesday August 01, 2018 @07:15AM (#57047988) Homepage

      Yep.

      I've not been to the cinema for years, but from a promotion from an unrelated company (my mobile phone company), I got a load of free or really-cheap tickets (50p for any movie, etc.).

      I used them up, at a place with free parking, not far from my house, sat through big-name movies, didn't pay a penny for any extras (popcorn, etc.).

      A few things occurred to me:

      - The theatres were empty. Barely 10% occupied most of the time. And I was going after work, in the evening, on weekends, etc. to released-that-week movies.
      - The adverts were far too long, but I took it as "part of my free night out".
      - The movies were... meh. I mean, watchable but no better than if it had been on TV, where I could have at least paused it, and I didn't really think much of them at all.

      I honestly don't think I'd watch those movies ever again, I don't think if it cost me more than literally pocket change that I'd bother, and I don't think the cinema added anything over just watching at home.

      And then, at home, I have a projector with a humongous white-screen, black-out curtains, air-con (unusual for the UK but we've had a good summer this year!). I have good personal headphones or a sound system, I can eat and drink what I like, pause when I need, replay, put on subtitles, I get zero adverts, nobody stepping over me, no whispering behind me, and I can turn off the movie when I get bored.

      The only "advantage" - seeing movies slightly earlier. Which is just silly, when I have huge libraries available to me that I'm already paying for and could easily suffer the "wait" of them flopping and being available for free or cheaper on Netflix, or Amazon, or Google Play, or whatever...

      I don't get the cinema business model any more. I don't see how they operate or profit.

      And my own money is better spent on a huge white-screen, a decent projector and hell, setting up in the garden of an evening and inviting mates around.

    • Yep, most of the movies aren't that great, and they're not trying all that hard either. Why not? Because people will go see Batman XXV, or Jaws 50, or whatever, so its a formula that is likely to pay for the production costs. One-off artsy films trying to be great are very difficult to do and require rare talent, so rare that they often just flop 'cuz that talent is rare, and those that try and aren't rare talents produce ho-hum stuff that people don't go to, or don't go to a 2nd time or buy or rent the

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by dj245 ( 732906 )

      In the past when I'd see a bad movie, I'd just chalk it up to bad chance. But now I see that pretty much the whole lot of them are just not that great, almost immediately forgettable. And rare indeed is a Hollywood-produced movie that is any good, in my experience. Independent film has a far better hit to loss ratio.

      A huge shift has happened in the past 10 years. TV used to be low budget and were 2nd class to movies in every respect. That has now effectively reversed. Many decent movie scripts are being picked up by Netflix, Amazon, etc and being turned into a multi-episode series. You could even make a case that the best writers and producers in the business now are concentrated in the TV/streaming market.

      Movies are sort of a relic of a bygone era, when a large screen and air conditioning wasn't something the av

    • I'll present the contrary opinion that they were not uniformly poor. My wife and I got MoviePass in February, and have seen 21 movies for less than $100 each. I actually thought a lot of them were pretty good. so I suppose its a matter of opinion. I can confirm that the theaters are empty.

      On my scale of one to 5, less than 3 is something I'm glad I didn't pay full price for. No movie I saw this year was a waste of my time and worth what I paid for.

      On my scale of 1 to 5 stars:
      Mamma Mia! - Good singing -

  • LOL (Score:2)

    by DrXym ( 126579 )
    "Enhancing discovery" is a great weasel way of saying their subscribers just got fucked over and can't watch mainstream movies during the release window any more.

  • Missed a step (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    The headline should have read:

    Moviepass will increase price
    Limit availability of new movies
    Go out of business.

  • I honestly wouldn't stomach watching a new Hollywood movie every month. I barely see maybe five-six new films per year. At this rate, even the old 10 bucks a month deal would still be terrible.

  • Just because a new company's business looks good or interesting, it doesn't mean that they will succeed. In fact, most of them will fail.

    Evolution at work (or rather, at business).

  • specially when they're trying to spin something bad as good. They're actually pretty inventive with their lies. It's funny

  • We're losing money on each customer.... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by EvilSS ( 557649 ) on Wednesday August 01, 2018 @08:12AM (#57048320)
    ...but we'll make it up in volume!

  • Why does Slashdot have an article on this app every couple of days? [google.com]. It's an app for buying movie tickets, who the heck cares? 1 article talking about their horrible security and privacy is enough, I don't need to know every time they add a new feature, every time a competitor makes yet another app like it, and every time the price changes.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by faedle ( 114018 )

      Well, for starters, movie nerds are still "nerds". And in many ways, MoviePass is "stuff that matters" in the sense that it has caused disruption to the movie theater inudstry (see: AMC's grumblings about this).

      It's a bit more than "just a way of buying tickets." If you've been paying attention, it's essentially started as an "unlimited" movie service like Netflix, but the difference is you watch movies in meatspace. It was a novel idea, it was ridiculous dot.com style business modeling, and it dealt wit

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by MobyDisk ( 75490 )

        something a lot of nerds are passionate about (movies).

        Video games: yeah, but movies? Must not be my circle. I'm thinking that the AC who replied might be right on though: it's a stock market thing. Or maybe the "technology disrupting an industry" angle, although I'm not sure how they are disrupting anyone here. Maybe that is just wishful thinking? Either way, the post rate seems excessive.

        Years ago you could disable stories on Slashdot by category, so I could have disabled "Movies" stories. But it looks like that feature has vanished. Oh well. :-(

  • This weekend MoviePass didn't work at all. Tried every movie at the theater I always go to and it said something along the lines of this movie is not available for every single movie. Just cancel. If it's not available even the one time in the past month that I went to the movies then what's the point of having it. Why would I ever plan my schedule around availability that they choose for me and isn't listed anywhere.
  • Maybe they should start producing their own movies ...

  • I'm probably the reason they're in trouble, because, "I see everything." Not really, I don't go to the ones that are "Too stupid for words." That would be stuff like "Dumb and Dumber" or this current thing with the Abba songs, "Mamma Mia." The trend toward female-centric movies where the men are either idiots or irrelevant are a turn-off and that's one of 'em. The biggest notable disappointment in the last year was the Star Wars flick with all the important positions being female, and the males were

  • But this bullshit of not being able see some movies for a couple weeks isn't going to fly. If I go to the theater, I better be able to see the movie.

  • Always the last ditch effort before bankruptcy.

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