Netflix Co-Founder's Crazy Plan: Pay $10 a Month, Go to the Movies All You Want (bloomberg.com)

Mitch Lowe, a founder of Netflix, has a crazy idea. Through his new startup MoviePass, he wants to subsidize our film habit, letting us go to the theater once a day for about the price of a single ticket. From a report: Lowe, an early Netflix executive who now runs a startup called MoviePass, plans to drop the price of the company's movie ticket subscriptions on Tuesday to $9.95. The fee will let customers get in to one showing every day at any theater in the U.S. that accepts debit cards. MoviePass will pay theaters the full price of each ticket used by subscribers, excluding 3D or Imax screens. MoviePass could lose a lot of money subsidizing people's movie habits. So the company also raised cash on Tuesday by selling a majority stake to Helios and Matheson Analytics, a small, publicly traded data firm in New York. [...] Theater operators should certainly welcome any effort to increase sales. The top four cinema operators, led by AMC Entertainment, lost $1.3 billion in market value early this month after a disappointing summer.

Comments

Ten years too late?

[xxxJonBoyxxx]

>> subsidize our film habit

Not sure I have a "visit theatre" habit anymore. I thought about going to see a couple of movies this summer but the cost/hassle/commute wasn't worth it, so I'd have to say the last time I set foot in the theatre was for Star Wars commando movie, and even then it was the full 3D experience (because otherwise why bother).

perfect for holiday giving

[turkeydance]

to beggers on the street

Hollywood is dying

[micahraleigh]

Tickets sales are WAAY down.

The problem is studios are formulaic about their stories, waaay lost in the jungle of fantasy, and getting very preachy about what political view they KNOW I should have.

I'm not paying for that. I'm not pirating that. I'm staying away.

Re:Hollywood is dying

[bobbied]

Actually, the issue is online entertainment is eating Hollywood's lunch. Netflix, AMC, et all, are out producing original content that is actually entertaining so you don't need to go to the movies anymore. It's the same issue broadcast TV is having.

That's not to say they are not putting out garbage. They are doing that too... I'm just saying that there is more to this issue.

Who goes to the movies daily?

[known_coward_69]

I bet the business model is to make money on the people who will rarely use this and hope the devil customers don't sign up in droves. Figure by next year they will start implementing limits like a lot of these crazy unlimited services do

We live in a subscription world...

[MikeDataLink]

Recurring revenue is all companies can think about and it is destroying things

Re:We live in a subscription world...

[MikeDataLink]

recurring revenue isn't always bad for the consumer because it's a very predictable item in a budget. For metered items sometimes you have to adjust how much you're spending on this

That's true until you have to have 15 subscriptions for competing services to see the content you want to see. HBO for Game of Thrones, Neflix for Victoria, Disney for Star Wars, etc. This isn't what consumers are asking for.

$$ POPCORN $$

[Anonymous Coward]

Remember folks, theaters make very little if nothing on ticket sales. Most of that goes directly to distributors & media companies, (and middlemen).

Where theaters really make their money is concessions. So hey, why not let in a bunch of people for basically free (nets the theater zero$), in the hopes you'll triple the amount of popcorn & sugar water sales!! To the average Joe they have just 'saved' thirty bucks on tickets & may drop the same into local establishment's fun-food instead. Really.

Re:For me this isn't worth it

[bondsbw]

I don't see many movies in theaters either, but if I had this service then I'd damn well make sure I got my money's worth. Someone out there is going to literally see a movie every day of the year just to do it.

I don't see how the business model is sustainable without making deals with the theaters.

Re:Nah. Fuck the cinema

[Bright Apollo]

No, you're not. $9.95 is a great price point.

Re:Which theaters participate?

[Kierthos]

As a wild guess, I'm betting that the app requires all kinds of access to your phone/personal data that it probably doesn't need in order to tell you which theaters nearby are "in network".