Finally some good news for all of the MoviePass members out there.
The cinema subscription club is bringing back its most popular flagship program known as its movie-a-day subscription package.
When the company first introduced the concept of a $10 per month plan that allowed users to see one movie per day, critics were quick to point out its financial issues. Currently, the price of just one movie ticket hovers around or above the $10 mark depending on where you live, so of course, the entertainment industry wasn’t pleased with the idea. Add to that the head-scratching problem of how MoviePass proposed to stay afloat by offering such a staggering discount to customers while paying full-price to the theaters it partners with, and it seemed like the offer of a movie-a-day for just $10 a month was too good to be true.
And for a while, it was.
Since April 13, MoviePass has only been offering a $29.95 three-month plan with a free iHeart Radio streaming subscription thrown in. The company’s headline-making movie-per-day package disappeared from its website and MoviePass CEO Mitch Lowe seemed to hint that members wouldn’t see it again in an interview with t he Hollywood Reporter . Apparently, that was all a ruse.
https://twitter.com/MoviePass/status/991697476162908160
“We never planned to abandon the flagship product that everybody loves,” Lowe told Variety . “Any time we’ve done a promotional package, we’ve taken the monthly plan off our site.”
Lowe explained that the company removed their original subscription plan to entice users to sign up for their promotional iHeart Radio deal. Nonetheless, that still doesn’t quell the growing suspicion that MoviePass is basically hemorrhaging money and has no way to sustain such a low-cost model moving forward, especially as theater ticket prices continue to skyrocket.
Add to that the issues of fraud the company is trying to combat and things still don’t look promising. This month, MoviePass announced that it would no longer allow members repeat viewings of films right as the biggest box office performer, Avengers: Infinity Wars, was set to release. In a statement, Lowe explained the decision saying families were purchasing one card per member and some people were even trying to sell their MoviePass subscriptions at a profit.
Basically, what all of this means is that if you’ve been considering a MoviePass subscription, now’s probably the time to sign up before everything changes yet again.
