I’m never going to be allowed to stop writing about this, am I?
You… might remember MoviePass. The service allowed you to see, at least initially, as many movies in theaters per month (1 per day, though) as you wanted. While the logic of that model was sound on paper (most people, even with the service, would only see a number of movies less than subscription cost), in practice, people took a fair amount of advantage of it. Add in the fact that major chains, like AMC, instituted a fair amount of pushback, and that model looked less and less viable. Despite multiple attempts to dial back the ability to watch infinite amounts of movies for your low subscription price, the service shut down late 2019, with parent company Helios and Matheson deciding to put it into Chapter 7 bankruptcy early 2020. In layman’s terms, Chapter 7 is “we’re dumping the body in a barrel of acid and leaving it buried in the desert” levels of the service is dead.
I can not overstate how many times I had to write about MoviePass. I thought it was dead.
Well, it turns out that MoviePass is returning for this Fall’s movie season. Starting August 25th, you can get on the waiting list (posted at 9 a.m. ET) for MoviePass’s new model of service. The waitlist will be open for 5 days, and sometime after that, potential users will get to see which tier of the new plan they’re eligible for. There will be a $10, $20, and $30 plan.
This is, however, a far cry from the $10 unlimited plan from 5 years ago. Rather, the model is credits to cash in each month. The credits, of course, come from you watching ads in-app to earn them, and no cheating; they have eyeball tracking to make sure you’re actually watching. The joke everybody immediately made.
You might, however, notice that former Miramax exec Stacy Spikes is back for this new MoviePass. Spikes was ousted from his CEO position at the company back in 2018, but has now returned to head up the new iteration of the company. Not really much of a surprise considering he was the original driving force, but still.
Spikes is promising big with the new MoviePass. From an interview with IndieWire:
I would say, think of MoviePass as Airbnb to the movie industry, where now A24 can speak directly and engage with consumers directly and easily. They don’t have the muscle or the might to be able to move the needle.
Stacy Spikes
The other major comparison made in that interview is to Audible as far as the user experience is concerned, in addition to plans that will allow users to roll over credits to the next month, or purchase them outright. In the February presentation, he said:
The tiered plans are going to be able to allow you to come in at a place that you feel more comfortable with. What we saw was $10 was a really good starting point for a lot of people who said, ‘I don’t know if I’m going to use it or not. The tiered system is going to let different people play at different levels.”
Stacy Spikes
Of course, he did note during the beta testing that they were going to make mistakes. So, maybe pardon their dust. Every failure is a learning experience, right?
It still remains to be seen how AMC’s going to respond; they created their Stubs program specifically to combat the original unlimited version of MoviePass, after banishing it from their theaters. There’s also the fact that Regal Cinemas is considering Chapter 11 restructuring, so it remains to be seen what the landscape is going to shape into going into 2023.
Source: IndieWire
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