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    Owner Dan Druff's Avatar
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    MoviePass: The trainwreck on its way to a complete derail

    When I first heard about MoviePass, I thought it was a brilliant idea. You would pay $10/month to see unlimited movies in any theater (maximum one per day). Great for the movie-loving consumer. The seats would have to be purchased "day of" -- meaning that MoviePass couldn't be used to grab advance seats at highly awaited premieres, which would clearly fill up beforehand.

    I assumed that they had made deals with theaters all across the US to basically reimburse them very little for seats which would have gone empty.

    The genius in what I assumed was the arrangement was that movie theaters have empty seats in the vast majority of their showings, and sometimes the theaters are almost entirely empty. This would benefit the theaters, as the cost of filling those empty seats is almost zero, so even a small percentage payment of the ticket price would be worth it. Furthermore, the theater would also make money on the (very overpriced) concessions sold to these customers.

    So this finally would bridge the gap between the theaters whining, "Why are there 3 people seeing this movie at 3pm on Wednesday?" and the consumers whining, "I don't want to pay $12 per ticket to see a movie first-run. If I could see the movie in a decent theater for far cheaper, I would totally go."

    But that's not really how MoviePass works.

    In reality, MoviePass supposedly reimburses the movie theaters for the full cost of the ticket! (I write "supposedly", because it's possible they struck some deals with certain theaters to pay less.)

    So if you're paying them $10/month, and you're going to $150 worth of movies in that month, isn't MoviePass taking a huge haircut?

    In fact, even one ticket per month ($12 in many markets) would cause MoviePass to lose money on that customer.

    How could they possibly be profitable?

    This article from Wired claims that MoviePass' real revenue sources include movie-habit datamining, promoting lesser-known independent films, and splitting concession stand purchases.

    Yes, splitting concession stand purchases. MoviePass has approached theaters around the country and demanded that they split the profits from the concession stands, according to the percentage of people who purchased their tickets with MoviePass. So if 5% of the tickets were purchased with MoviePass at a theater, then the theater is supposed to cough up 2.5% of the concession stand profits of the day to MoviePass.

    Not surprisingly, some of the bigger theater chains balked at this, especially AMC. This caused MoviePass to turn off certain big-city AMC theaters from its service in the spring, hoping to pressure AMC into submission, only to quietly turn it back on again when AMC finally came to some undisclosed terms with them.

    The theaters have no choice but to accept MoviePass because it functions as a normal debit card (which only works at movie theaters).

    Also of concern: The terms of service of MoviePass are extremely obnoxious.

    MoviePass is worried that several people will share an account, and this paranoia has led to a highly restrictive, obnoxious terms of service, including the odd term that your account will be suspended if you don't use the latest version of their app (lol).

    In the meantime, AMC opened up their own internal version of MoviePass. While AMC's version only allows three movies per week, only works at their theaters, and costs twice as much as MoviePass, it does allow people to book tickets well in advance, and also gives them discounts on concessions.


    So how is MoviePass doing?

    Their stock, which was $39 in October, closed at 18 cents yesterday.



    Here is a laughable interview with their CEO, who seems quite delusional: https://money.cnn.com/2018/07/12/med...ock/index.html

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    Diamond PLOL's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Dan Druff View Post
    In the meantime, AMC opened up their own internal version of MoviePass. While AMC's version only allows three movies per week, only works at their theaters, and costs twice as much as MoviePass, it does allow people to book tickets well in advance, and also gives them discounts on concessions.
    You can also get premium AMC tix like 3D, iMAX, dine-in, etc, that you can't get with Moviepass.

    Didn't realize Movie Pass was a public company. I was about to sign up for them, but now I wonder if they'll be bankrupt before I do. Just be sure to do month to month.
    TRUMP 2024!

    Quote Originally Posted by verminaard View Post
    Just non-stop unrelenting LGBT propaganda being shoved down our throats.

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    Quote Originally Posted by Dan Druff View Post



    So how is MoviePass doing?

    Their stock, which was $39 in October, closed at 18 cents yesterday.



    Here is a laughable interview with their CEO, who seems quite delusional: https://money.cnn.com/2018/07/12/med...ock/index.html
    it was a good idea but the app portion was a failboat idea from the start. i'm sure many bailed just because of it or it couldn't be supported, or was a pia to use.

    18 cents..lol
    Quote Originally Posted by bottomset_69 View Post
    Johnny Manziel will be the 1st pick in the draft. I truly believe not only will Johnny Manziel be rookie of the year, quite possibly he will be MVP as his style will shock defensive coordinators. Manziel may only be 6 feet tall, but he has size 15 feet. And he has HUGE hands. I know some NFL scouts so I know what I am talking about.



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    What's the implied valuation for 18 cents?
    TRUMP 2024!

    Quote Originally Posted by verminaard View Post
    Just non-stop unrelenting LGBT propaganda being shoved down our throats.

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    1st communications class i took in college the prof said concessions is where the money is made
    Quote Originally Posted by bottomset_69 View Post
    Johnny Manziel will be the 1st pick in the draft. I truly believe not only will Johnny Manziel be rookie of the year, quite possibly he will be MVP as his style will shock defensive coordinators. Manziel may only be 6 feet tall, but he has size 15 feet. And he has HUGE hands. I know some NFL scouts so I know what I am talking about.



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    It's no surprise this is failing. They started with $50/month which is a huge ripoff then dropped to $9.95 where I believe it is now but also ran it for $6.95 for a bit.

    They also have a $7.95 pass for 3 movies a month which has to be more then the average movie enthusiast goes to to the theater.

    Those prices are way too cheap and rely on people to buy over priced snacks each time to survive.

    How many years away do you think we are from every movie being also available on PPV or some expensive streaming service maybe $30/month that has not only all the new released movies thousands of others?

    What if they gave the theaters two weeks with new movies then they put them on these services since most ticket sales are going to happen in the first few weeks anyways?

    We live in an era where a majority of people have big screens and some have a home theater. A lot of people will even watch a cheap ass camera filmed pirated movie over going to the theater so it seems they should be trying to scrape every penny they can out of a movie quickly using multiple platforms.

    Most of these people who watch everything they get pirated aren't going to get that type of service or buy the movie on ppv (obviously) but some people are willing to spend it for convenience because they have a weird schedule,etc...

    The movie industry needs to find a way to embrace the change of times and should have long ago. It's just like the music industry was forced to do so thanks to napster type services leading towards all digital music content practically eliminating CDs from existence.

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    The movie industry is actually doing fairly well
    TRUMP 2024!

    Quote Originally Posted by verminaard View Post
    Just non-stop unrelenting LGBT propaganda being shoved down our throats.

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    Owner Dan Druff's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by BeerAndPoker View Post
    It's no surprise this is failing. They started with $50/month which is a huge ripoff then dropped to $9.95 where I believe it is now but also ran it for $6.95 for a bit.

    They also have a $7.95 pass for 3 movies a month which has to be more then the average movie enthusiast goes to to the theater.

    Those prices are way too cheap and rely on people to buy over priced snacks each time to survive.

    How many years away do you think we are from every movie being also available on PPV or some expensive streaming service maybe $30/month that has not only all the new released movies thousands of others?

    What if they gave the theaters two weeks with new movies then they put them on these services since most ticket sales are going to happen in the first few weeks anyways?

    We live in an era where a majority of people have big screens and some have a home theater. A lot of people will even watch a cheap ass camera filmed pirated movie over going to the theater so it seems they should be trying to scrape every penny they can out of a movie quickly using multiple platforms.

    Most of these people who watch everything they get pirated aren't going to get that type of service or buy the movie on ppv (obviously) but some people are willing to spend it for convenience because they have a weird schedule,etc...

    The movie industry needs to find a way to embrace the change of times and should have long ago. It's just like the music industry was forced to do so thanks to napster type services leading towards all digital music content practically eliminating CDs from existence.
    Good post.

    I have a good home theater setup (100 inch projection screen, 7-channel sound), so I figure I'd rather just wait a few months and see the movie at home. I imagine many feel that way, even those with just a standard big screen TV.

    I totally agree that the correct model is just to relegate these passes to movies at least a few weeks old (maybe less than that for lower-profile releases), and then make deals with the movie theater to get a severely cut rate of reimbursement. I'm sure they could come up with a formula to where everyone wins from it.

    I realize that the movie theater industry doesn't want to train people to avoid new releases in order to wait 'til later to get deep discounts, but I think there's still enough demand to see new movies that this still won't matter.

    Maybe MoviePass will at least spur some changes in the movie theater industry to where they get more with the times, and seeing movies becomes more of a tiered pricing experience.

    For me, it's not even the price keeping me away from the theaters. It's just the inconvenience factor, especially with a kid who would need a babysitter (and isn't old enough to see any movie I'd want to see at this point).

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