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MoviePass' Low Subscription Price Just Got Lower (hollywoodreporter.com)
In a move to lure new subscribers, MoviePass has dropped the price of its monthly subscription service from about $10 per month to just under $7. From a report: The company said for $6.95 per month, new subscribers will get one movie ticket per day, a minor catch being that users must pay for a year up-front. There is also a one-time $6.55 processing fee. It's the umpteenth time that MoviePass has changed its price since launching six years ago at $40 per month (before raising it to $50), most significantly eight months ago when it was cut to just $9.95. The change had the desired effect, as subscribers swelled from 20,000 then to nearly 3 million today. Still, MoviePass is not without its critics, as some theater chains -- most notably AMC -- have criticized the service for allegedly cheapening the moviegoing experience. Also, industry executives worry that MoviePass cannot survive (it pays mostly full price for the movie tickets its subscribers use) and wonder if users that are left in the lurch when it folds will ever want to pay $9 (the average price in the U.S.) per ticket again.
... as some theater chains -- most notably AMC -- have criticized the service for allegedly cheapening the moviegoing experience.
Funniest thing I've read all week. Thanks AMC, et al.
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
That's basically cheaper than Netflix and on a better screen. Also, if the app is on a shared smartphone, that's one movie per day for any member of a family or set of roomies.
It's about having enough movies worth watching at all.
#DeleteFacebook
For four months in a row, the app would not let me reserve a movie. Any tickets I purchased outside the app were not reimbursed. When trying to contact customer service, they never responded. So why pay for both a moviepass subscription and for movies, so for me it cost double so I cancelled. Oh well, I wished it would have worked.
The real issue is will they be around in a year? I might do this, but you better believe I'm going to try and recoup my yearly fee ASAP.
If you're rich, you already can: https://www.engadget.com/2013/...
If I were rich, I wouldn't bother watching movies at all.
If you have to pay for parking, it's generally in a downtown area where you can walk. Booze = easy enough to sneak into a theater. Flasks exist that fit in a pocket and once the lights are off, who's the wiser?
I started going to the movies again because of moviepass. It has allowed me to remember how annoying people at the theater can be. Even if everyone has their cellphones quieted, they still talk to one another when I'm trying to listen to the movie. Also, the snack prices are all more than I paid to see the movie. So I have a strong incentive to eat beforehand and NEVER eat movie popcorn/candy/sodas. If something happens in a movie, someone will yell out: "Hah!" It's more annoying than you might think. I'm not sure I will renew for the next month. (I used the phone app which allowed a monthly subscription instead of annual.)
I would be interested. However, they are not accepted at -any- theaters here in the capital of Alaska. Go figure.
I do not respond to trolls (AKA Anonymous Cowards)
Yeah, they don't care about booze, especialy if you pour your flask into a soda container post factum...
At home, I have a screen, stereo, a remote with a pause button, quiet environment, suitable lighting, food, drinks, free parking, proximity to the spawn of my loins and distance from inconsiderate assholes - everything I need for a good movie experience EXCEPT the fucking movie. That is ALL I require. That's ALL I am interested in paying for.
If I could get "once per day" or even "once per week" access to current run movies, I'd gladly pay for that. A year in advance too.
Too bad Netflix's library dwindles each year
Too bad a theatre can only show a dozen movies versus the thousands at Netflix, regardless of a "shrinking" library.
lol.
Seems to cheap here. They must be betting that 6/7 of the tickets promised go unused. If they have to pay the theater the full price of the ticket, how are they making money? This seems like MyGallons getting scammed in to the way of bankruptcy.
With 4K TVs getting cheap, and BluRay now competing with the likes of NetFlix, Amazon Prime movies, and cable on-demand, theaters are no longer the only way to see a high-quality movie. I expect ticket prices to sink soon.
I don't think this is a chain letter, it's an offer that is too easily schemed against. It's to easy for the customer getting more service than they paid for, so I expect this to go bankrupt mid-year for most users. That's exactly what happened to MyGallons, a gas price hedging club.
One ticket per day sounds like a reasonable limit equating to "unlimited"... with the prices you pay for getting there the limiter from redeeming the ticket every day.
Could you be a little less obvious about it. e.g. run with a title like "Moviepass slashes subscription fee on lower subscriber numbers" or something? This reads like the copy submitted by the company's marketing director, which is probably is.
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You'll eventually get what you're looking for, which makes me very sad. It will kill theaters. And the internet has already killed almost every other reason to ever leave your house.
I like going to the theater. I like that it's not my house. I like it even though conditions aren't perfect.
I don't want to try to stop you from achieving your dream of watching movies on your couch sooner. I hope it makes you happy when you inevitably get it. It just makes me terribly sad.
For this one you're giving this company a lot of personal info in exchange for the "free" movie ticket.
On the very rare occasion I actually want to see a movie (which has never been more than once in a month), I'll buy the tickets through the union for $6 each. Since I can buy more than one at that rate, I'm not stuck convincing my buddies to pay 2-3x more than I am to go out to a movie. College students and employees can get similar deals through student associations and the like. People just have to actually look for these deals, they won't be advertised on Slashdot.
Frankly, the go-out-to-a-movie experience has turned to shit in general.
Maybe you should consider a different theater.
I went and saw a movie a few months ago. The theater was crowded--sold out, in fact--but I had a reserved seat. It was a nice comfy lounge chair. It wasn't particularly noisy or smelly.
So I'm not sure what theater you're going to, but perhaps you should consider going to a different one.
The only places at the local mall open past 10PM are bars and the movie theater. The mall itself is in a different town than most of the surrounding roads, so the (very bored) town cops will wait at the town line and nab DUIs all night - it would be hilarious if one of those caught had come out of a movie rather than a bar. There's no excuse to drive drunk: the city buses run past midnight, the mall has a taxi stand, and overnight parking is allowed (so they can leave their car without fear of ticketing). Yet every night without fail there's at least one driver caught.
"and wonder if users that are left in the lurch when it folds will ever want to pay $9 (the average price in the U.S.) per ticket again" We don't want to pay $9 in the first place! In my area the average movie price is $13 so we are above average. I would gladly pay $9 instead of $13 but I still didn't like the price increase in my area. We went from $5 to $7 to $9 to $13 over the last 10 years or so. Also, how can a subscription service cheapen the "movie experience"? For me the movie experience is linked to the quality of the theater not the cost of a ticket or even how I acquired the ticket, unless of course the movie sucked, then the cost of the ticket weighs quite heavily in my mind. For the most part the only movies I go see in theaters any more are those that benefit from a large screen. Sweeping epics (Dunkirk), Science Fiction (Star Wars, Star Trek), Action Movies (MCU). Most everything else I wait for DVD and Netflix.
I just watch films as they get home releases. I don't have any need to watch them the instant they hit theatres.
"New" just means "new to me". I don't give a shit when other people watch them.
On the whole I totally agree, but I can see why others don't. Watching a blockbuster, (or even just a reasonably popular movie), close to its release, means there are friends and co-workers that you can talk to about the flick while it's still fresh in everybody's minds. Plus, you're less likely to hear spoilers.
I think cinemas as we've known them are pretty much in their death throes anyway. I suspect that within a decade, new movies will be available for home viewing either immediately, or within a week or two of release. Obviously, the former will happen if cinemas are dead by then. The latter will apply to any cinemas that might remain, because box-office receipts will fall off very quickly after opening day. In that situation maintaining an exclusive won't help the theatres much, but probably will reduce the movie's total take significantly.
'The Economy' is a giant Ponzi scheme whose most pitiable suckers are the youngest among us and the yet-unborn.
Seeing deals to get movie tickets sub $12 / $10 and even $8 AUD (10 / 8 / 6$ US) per ticket.
Mind you, it's a deal thing, sometimes it excludes one or two top end films, also if you go to I dunno, say an 8:30 session and it's playing in the 'Deluxe' room with better seats, you're forced to pay a $2 upgrade fee on the tickets (Etc)
That being said, they do seem desperate to get people in seats. I've also heard a lot of cinemas took a beating on Star Wars TLJ paraphenalia, big time. Ours has been selling excess cups / water bottles from Star Wars for ages, the product isn't moving.
Mind you, if you just walk in off the street and pay for the movies it's still going to be nearly $20 US a ticket unplanned. It ain't cheap here.
I'm guessing movie theatres aren't getting butts in seats, maybe people are finally sick of comic book movies.
It was a nice comfy lounge chair.
So? I have that at home, but without someone else's boogers.
I don't see the appeal of movie theaters. I would much rather wait until I can rent it for $3.99 for the whole family on Amazon Video.
My wife is less patient, and has TWO MoviePass cards. She goes to see at least one movie a week, and takes along one of the kids, or a friend, or sometimes me. So they are losing a lot of money on her. She is paying $20 for the two cards, and (according to TFA) MoviePass is paying the theaters $80 to $100 per month. Unless my wife is very atypical, I don't see how they can stay in business.
If it weren't for AMC we would not be going to the movies. We like the advanced seat selection. If the seats we want are not available, then it is no big deal. We just pick a different time and maybe date. We have two AMC theaters close to us. One is actually better than the other with more comfortable seats. That's the theater we prefer. We don't have to rush. We know where we are going to sit before we leave the house. I don't care for the Prime viewings as it seems to be nothing more than AMC LOUD, but that's just me. Their Stubs membership has paid for itself in the transaction fees we haven't paid.
With the recent stories regarding the tracking the MoviePass app performs, I don't need them running down the battery in my phone, or consuming my data.
I don't see how they can stay in business.
Because they will sell the data that they collect from you to other companies that want the data. Much like with Facebook and Google, YOU (and the data about you) are the product, and the customer is the other companies buying that data from MoviePass.
WTB [sig], PST!!!