Everything that boots is beautiful.
By now, you should instantly associate Helios & Matheson with the albatross known as MoviePass. What you might not know is that MoviePass isn’t the only movie-related thing they owned. I mean, they helped finance Gotti; that should’ve told you lots.
Anyway, they also owned MovieFone. Which, to be frank, I pretty much thought died alongside Blockbuster franchises. Back in 1999, AOL bought MovieFone for $388 million. Now, in 2020, after a number of changed hands, Helios & Matheson was only able to get $1 million for it. And that was the best out of 9 offers, according to Deadline. Coincidentally, they paid $9 million to obtain it from Verizon, meaning that they took an $8 million bath on it.
MovieFone now belongs to Born In Cleveland LLC, per that same Deadline article. And I wonder how much it’ll dip in price the next time it’s sold.
Source: Gizmodo