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

How much do I pay...

[mapkinase]

... to kick out all teenagers and people with small kids?

Which theaters participate?

[Jfetjunky]

Their website calls it a "Theater Network", which immediately conjures up the idea that it doesn't work everywhere. But there's no way to see in advance (that I could find) which theaters participate in their service. The FAQ has this specific question listed, but it just tells you to go back to the main website, where there is no apparent way to find this info without signing up for the service.

Yeah, you get a 1-month trial just like Netflix did/does, but I'd still like to see in advance if it's even worth pursuing.

Re:Ten years too late?

[Zak3056]

We have a drive in outside of Knoxville, and it's fantastic. If you don't want to sit in the car, then park facing backward and sit in the bed of your pickup, or bring those canvas fold-up chairs to sit in. Bring whatever snacks you want to from the outside world, or use the theater's snack bar, where a diner style cheeseburger costs $4.00 rather than spending $8.00 for popcorn at the regular theater that tells you you can't even bring your backpack in because you might have a bottle of water of some candy in it. See two movies (one of which is often a new release... I remember they had Avengers on opening day) for $7.00 a head.

Best movie experience I've had in decades.