MoviePass - will it die a premature death or is it here to stay

so I signed up for Moviepass out of curiosity a few weeks ago. $9.95 per month currently, can use it to see a new movie (non-3D or IMAX) each day.

You basically have to be within 100 yards of the theatre and 'check in' to the specific movie you want to see. Then you get a half hour to buy your ticket using the special Moviepass debit card. Supposedly 'checking in' loads the necessary balance to buy the ticket.

I've now used it five times without issue. It's a little mindboggling how this business model will work - the creator states it will work because the average user will go from seeing 3-6 movies a year to 6-12 movies a year...yet so far, everybody I know that has one has used it 5+ times in a given month.

I think it's obvious to say the $9.95 pricing is not going to last long (which is fine - even at $40/month, this would be worth it for me). But I really feel like this is the type of thing that could fall apart real fast.

What I don't get is AMC's vehement opposition to it. Like, they're getting paid for the tickets sold, and people will likely spend more on concessions if they're not paying an individual ticket price. Their statement that they don't believe in the business model's long-term success = who the fuck cares?

Anybody else using this thing?

Knowing nothing but what you just posted, sounds like yet another startup idea depending on people forgetting to cancel to make money that will be kept afloat by VC dollars, which will be spent on ads coming to a podcast near you. They are probably hoping to be acquired by a theater chain. Enjoy your movies!

I know several people who have been using it since early days, and it works extremely well by word-of-mouth - but I don't see it converting the occasional moviegoer. So it's a bit of a pyramid scheme built with VC money, so at some point, the piper needs to get paid. In this case they seem to be benefiting from muddling the identity of said piper - is it the theaters, the regular ticket buyers, or the VCs?

I don't think it can stick around unless they actually pull an Amazon Prime and get people paying for the option of using it and then not actually using it. Like subsidizing healthcare without an individual mandate. Flopson to thread.

netflix has 20billion in debt. losing money is not a problem so long as they keep growing. If moviepass get big enough to dictate ticket prices to AMC, that would be reason enough to scare them.

I investigated, and of course you need a phone. Not doin' that.

home page says
"ANY MOVIE
ANY THEATER
ANY DAY"

enter your zip code and it gives a list of multiplexes up to neighbouring cities, one rep cinema, and one arthouse.

I heard something about this service a few weeks ago, and for some reason I assumed it was an opt-in thing that my local theaters--my local arthouse, anyway--probably wouldn't be in on. But I guess it's not, so I just signed up. I will definitely either save money on this or lose money from spending too much on popcorn and soda, destroying my health in the process. Either way it should be lots of fun.

To answer the title question: I think it'll die. But it does seem like tech companies can stay afloat for years without ever making money, somehow, so maybe that'll happen with this too. (Wikipedia says it was founded in 2011, so maybe it already has.)

enter your zip code and it gives a list of multiplexes up to neighbouring cities, one rep cinema, and one arthouse.

ie not including half a dozen arthouses, in Seattle

looks pretty good for LA though!

This could work given the price of concessions. I think I paid $6 for a small soda this summer.

unless you are an absolutist like me who never drops a dime on concessions.

they were dying in the sense that until recently they had been jacking up membership prices with more and more restrictions, but the recent buyout is what precipitated this absurd "how can this make money" pricing.
if i were an indie theater, i would create extra showings with premium $20+/ticket pricing that movie pass would have to honor.

this means I can hate watch Justice League without feeling guilty this week

isn't it the 4th or 5th week that the movie theater gets to keep the majority of ticket sales, rather than it being slurped up almost entirely by distributor?

i've been using the hell out of mine, on the assumption that it can't last forever. in nyc it covers a lot of repertory and film-buff places so you really could see a great movie every day if you wanted. i've even done a lazy sunday where i paid for a screening of Paper Moon at a non-moviepass theater, did some reading, had a beer, then moviepassed a screening of the restored Old Dark House.

maybe the math makes more sense for them in the suburbs or something, where upper middle class families order them for the whole family then immediately forget about it and go infrequently enough that the money balances out once the price inevitably goes back up to the $50/month or whatever it was before this summer. idk. but imma ride this thing as long as i can. this weekend: lady bird! lost city of z! maybe something on friday!

used this on about 12 movies now. weirdly I signed up for the "annual" fee which equates to $6.95/month and they were supposed to take that this month and yet they just charged the old $9.95 rate.

feel like the movies per month will eventually be capped. I'm just milkin this as much as I can for now.

This has been great for me so far, set up subs for four people as holiday presents

I've used mine nineteen times since activating it on October 6. It's nuts.

Well, win lose or draw you got your money's worth!

goddamn smartphones

moviepass alone will have paid for my smartphone soon enough, but i assume that's not the main issue.

fwiw, anthology, FF, moma and momi are not on the service so it may offer less to you, morbs. (otoh: quad, metrograph, ifc, angelika....)

This has been great for me so far, set up subs for four people as holiday presents

https://www.moviepass.com/gifts/

seems to be back to $10/month, the ~80/year version having disappeared after a VERY short interval. still an insane steal obv.

http://variety.com/2017/film/news/hollywood-2017-in-review-box-office-netflix-1202647206/

There are problems with this business model. MoviePass pays full freight on each individual ticket that it’s customers buy, which means that it is losing money on a per-transaction basis and heavily subsidizing its subscribers’ movie-going. The company hopes that the data it gathers on its customers will eventually be so valuable that studios or movie theaters will give them a steep discount or that it will be able to monetize the information in a different way. It’s unclear if that will happen, particularly given that AMC, the world’s largest exhibitor, has at various points threatened legal action. If MoviePass doesn’t find a way to turn a profit, it could find itself in dire financial straits.

It's interesting cause basically all this was already true before the price drop, but obviously that has massively expanded the user base while reducing what each user pays so whatever's going to happen, they've kicked it into high gear.

Signed up, because what a deal (until they change the terms). Bummed, though, that it seems I can't use it until the card arrives. App requires the last 4 digits.

swiping the card to buy tickets also requires having the card

I just figured they'd email me my card number so I could start seeing movies right away.

a few theaters allow e-ticketing through the moviepass app now, it seems

our local beer/food/cinema place is apparently in on that deal so I'm tempted

very few though, apparently

I've used it at five different theatres this year, and ime cinemas are not set up for you to type your card number into the self-serve kiosk, nor for you to read your number to the box office attendant instead of passing them your card

one of our big AMC theatres was removed from the list of participants, weirdly.

I've used this a fuck ton, though not yet this month. I got in for the $86/annual rate.

I just found about the Costco deal, which is apparently still running, so I'm in

the only thing that sucks about it is if you go to one of the many theatres that do reserved seating now, because unless your theatre has eticketing (which most don't), you have to scan your card at the kiosk/box office, you p much either have to wait for your friend to show up, or buy your ticket and tell them which one to get to sit next to you and hope nobody else buys it.

though so far that hasn't caused major issues.

thanks to this I've gotten Regal fan club freebies a bazillion times a month lol

who is this "friend" you speak of

Peter Riegert

I heard that one of the big AMC's in New York (Times Square?) just stopped accepting MoviePass. If AMC jumps ship it could be a big problem.

for AMC or Moviepass?

AMC has notoriously been against it for weird reasons, and for those who live in areas that don't have as many options, it could strike a blow to the customer base in those areas for sure. people who live near in places like me, though, where there are a ton of chains available, would simply just go to a non-AMC theatre like Regal or Cinemark.

AMC just bought 2/3 of the local corporate-owned theaters here :/

beh.

https://deadline.com/2018/01/moviepass-lack-of-amc-theatres-coverage-1202269412/

Some details...this is actually coming from the MoviePass side

Missed this thread. Moviepass is insane. I've seen 37 movies since September with it. Hopefully they keep burnin' that VC money for a while before disappearing in a cloud of smoke.

fwiw at least one of the nyc AMCs, at 86th (?) on the UWS, has never been moviepassable because they're on some premium BS with $20 tickets and recliners and stuff. if times square is dropping off i guess it COULD mean they're upgrading that place, or that moviepass didn't want to reimburse for upmarket tickets. bummer though... i mean schlepping to times square is a drag and the place is a vageuly depressing and unfathomable three-dimensional maze. but it's one of the locations that tends to participate in the big national short-run rereleases. saw close encounters there a while back.

where this really racks up value as a new yorker is at the repertory participants: IFC, quad, metrograph, BAM, alamo. you really could see a good or interesting movie every day on this thing. it's changed my whole relationship to the movies really.

I've used it at five different theatres this year,

update: six.

I used it twice in Manhattan, which was nice considering how much higher movie prices are there compared to here in Orlando.

including the Times Square Regal on 42nd street

The Costco deal came with a year of Fandor, too, so I guess my new problem is to remember to do things other than watching movies

lol i think last week was the first one that I didn't see a movie in months, was a weird feeling

I had meant to use the Costco promo. Turns out they are perfectly cool with you canceling and then going through the Costco promo instead, however, I have to wait for my account to activate first, which means receiving my card and starting the billing cycle first. But then once I cancel I can't use my primary email address for nine months until the account is totally closed. oh well, at least they are reasonably flexible.

man imagine being the moviepass intern stuck writing up little hollow, phony blurbs for stupid emails, hey movie buddy, we know your taste well and that's why we hope you're as excited as we are about MAZE RUNNER: DEATH CURE

this article on the AMC situation gives a much more hardball picture of the details: https://www.marketwatch.com/story/moviepass-cuts-ties-with-amc-theaters-in-battle-for-revenue-share-2018-01-26

“I’m 1,000% ready to do battle,” Ted Farnsworth, chief executive of MoviePass’s majority owner Helios & Matheson Analytics Inc. HMNY, -3.92% told MarketWatch. “Hollywood is definitely paying attention to us, now we have to start pulling levers. We have to say to AMC, ‘look you don't want to deal with us, fine, but we’re not going to keep giving you free money’.’”

Farnsworth initially said he would cut ties with AMC, but MoviePass decided early Friday to pull just 10 of AMC’s more than 600 theaters instead.

MoviePass drove more than 1 million ticket sales to AMC theaters last month, compared with 10,000 sales last July, the month before it cut its monthly subscription to $10 from as much as $50, said Farnsworth. He also noted MoviePass represents roughly 62% of AMC’s operating income.

AMC was quick to rebuke the company after the price cut, saying the business model was unsustainable.

an interesting argument. "we came up with a scheme to transfer massive quantities of VC money from fleeced investors to theaters, promising that we'd eventually find a way to make it profitable. now here it is six months later and you theaters are flush with our VC cash transfers and what have we got to show for it?? about time you started paying your fair share of this deal!" if they are really driving new business to the theaters, which wouldn't surprise me (though them being 62% of AMC's operating income strikes me as completely absurd - wtf is that stat), then maybe it is time to start weaving this idea of fee-sharing into their business plan but it's going to be hard to do it without it looking like a shakedown each time. anyway obviously fee-sharing would only lower moviepass's losses; they still have to find some way of actually making money. could be the Maze Runner ads prove more viable.

the fee-sharing concept also looks kind of wonky from the theater perspective. by participating in moviepass you're making the moviepass subscription more attractive, since people jump on based on "you can use it at all these theaters!" if you're sharing fees with moviepass but another moviepass theater in town isn't, you're both getting the moviepass traffic (plus, hopefully, added popcorn sales etc.) but only one of you is having to share the wealth with moviepass. in a small way, you're subsidizing your competitors.

62%? that doesn't sound remotely plausible

moviepass has definitely gotten me to see movies I wouldn't have paid for, and probably spend more on snacks so maybe they have something there. still don't see that remotely paying off what i'm using from the card though

maybe Moviepass is a mob bustout for some poor schlub's gambling debts

Subscription services - movies, music, cable TV, phones - are a mental weight - I feel obliged to use them and “get my money’s worth.”

once you free yourself of that weight you will feel better imo

I pay them as penance for all I've downloaded.

i also have a tendency towards the get-the-money's-worth neurosis but it doesn't hit me as bad with netflix and moviepass because the price point is so low. together they add up to like, two cocktails with tip. if i watch even one thing on them a month that's a better use of my dollars than drinking (usually). and i use them a lot more than that. ymmv obv. i cannot imagine paying for cable tv though.

agreed, though i am the sucker that pays ~$200/month for cable because my parents can't live without Fox News.
so $10 a month for Amazon, Netflix and Moviepass each is a no-brainer

wow @ fox news... isn't that shit streaming on the web or something? buy them a cheap smart TV for $200 imho.

or just record fake Fox News broadcasts

idk in "goodbye lenin!" that proved to be more trouble than it was worth iirc

just record one week’s worth and play it back
in random order

they can use YouTube, but otherwise they'll never let of classic couch watching. at least they throw in some TCM in there every so often

buncha my FB friends are acting like they're woke for realizing the current model is unsustainable long term, like most people can't do the basic math in their head.

if anything the recent moves to make it work, especially the pushed notifications about maze runner 3, make it even more blindingly obvious that it's doomed. just gotta make it count while i can, i guess. see as many indelible classics on the big screen as you can, folks!

I bought in on the full year thing realizing it's going to be a chase against time to use the card at least a dozen times over a couple months

I'm ready

I've used it 12 times this month

Wired has a piece that gets into some of the implications of the model and what the future might hold.

https://www.wired.com/story/moviepass-second-act/

that's a much more interesting read than the 3700th iteration of "wake up sheeple! did you know $9.95 is LESS than the average price of a movie theatre ticket and that MoviePass is currently LOSING MONEY on every ticket?!!"

whether any of the lofty aspirations pan out obviously remains to be seen but kinda getting tired of smug friends IRL saying "oh you crafty cow, you knowwwwwww that is unsustainable, right dearie?"

tickets here are less but barely

but buying them every day sure isn’t doing em favors

cut forward two weeks, I have made good friends with the popcorn teen, and I now live off of popcorn and sleep in the broom closet at the movie theater

thank you, moviepass

here in town it's gotten so pricey that at some theatres $10 is the fuckin' matinee price!

yup that's true here in NY

heh I think my 2d Justice League ticket was $19 when I went to the Regal on 42nd street in Times Square.

new subscriptions (for the time being) capped to 4 movies a month w/ iHeartRadio bundled in.

existing subscriptions Terms and Services updated to prevent people from seeing same movie more than once (which was technically part of original agreement but MoviePass temporarily stopped enforcing it), and people will have to start scanning ticket stubs to prevent fraud.

I mean honestly, nothing shocking here, but of course the disinformation brigade is freaking out because either:

a) they were stupid enough to think the deal would last forever
b) they stupidly think their existing plan will be capped at 4-movies per month even though the Terms and Conditions still list the one 2d movie per month.

honestly I've made out like a bandit in just 4 months so when my annual subscription is up even if the unlimited never returns, I still won.

pretty much!

I’ve never been asked to scan a ticket stub but I keep going to a local indie place and a second theater that’s on their e-ticketing program so my fraud profile is probably super low

yeah with e-tickets they have a paper trail. I think some people actually managed to do the thing that I was curious about, which is somehow use the preloaded balance to buy a 3D or IMAX ticket, presumably by going to a pricier theatre, checking in so the balance loads, then going to a much cheaper theatre and using the preloaded balance to buy the fancier ticket.

I think the scanning thing is in beta with test subscribers?

I think the “beta” is they are making accounts with suspicious activity take pictures

lol I just got the email myself. haven't committed fraud but my usage is high so

Yeah I started having to scan my stubs a few weeks ago, it's a little annoying but not a big deal

one of the arguments today I heard - "7 new movies don't come out a week, so this is bullshit"

I use it a lot so of course I was on the beta for the ticket snap. I'm doing 5-10 movies a month, I've got no problem with it. Only get annoyed with I go to the theater and it doesn't work for whatever reason and I have to pay out of pocket, but that happens rarely enough.
I've even joined their competitor, Sinemia, which lets you get a limited number of tickets per month, like Moviepass of old, but allows for 3D and 1 specialty screening a month (IMAX, 4DX, etc.). they had a good promo earlier at $10 for 2 tickets per month, retail at 2 for $25 (which is fair if you're seeing 2 IMAX movies a month). Main reason is for double dip days when I can use Moviepass for the first movie and Sinemia for Movie #2.

imo some of the gripes are legit - the service was aggressively marketed as "see a movie every day!" and in most theater markets that's now impossible. if you signed up for an annual plan looking forward to seeing the tentpole blockbusters multiple times with different friends, the substance of the service has been changed out from under you, and in general i think we should always be pushing back against the legally and ethically shaky claims of "hey it was in the TOS that we could always change the TOS" whenever any of these companies leans on that. it just sounds like lame griping because moviepass remains a ridiculously good deal.

for me the bigger annoyance, hopefully soon to be fixed: the "Showtime Unavailable" option is treated as a single film titled Showtime Unavailable, so if you've ever used it, you can never use it again. just looks like bungled implementation to me but I could see it lazily not getting fixed for ages.

changing the TOS is totally dirty pool, agreed - hoping someone sues them on that one

on Showtime Unavailable, sounds like that's on purpose to get people to not use that option to see Avengers multiple times, again - dirty pool

Technically the TOS explictly stated that Moviepass “reserves the right to change from time to time the number of eligible movies a member can see per month.”, though not being a lawyer, I don't know if that's airtight, or about as legally shaky as "<business> is not responsible for any damages to your vehicle if you park in our lot"

but can they change the TOS for an agreement you paid for a year in advance? if it's month-to-month i can see the loophole working, but long term it should be like a lease

the little I know suggests that such clauses almost never hold up in court, but you have to take them to court, which few are going to bother to do for a service where the annual membership was under a hundred bucks and pays for itself after 5-10 movies. so it's the kind of totally slimy lame-ass move that companies always get away with.

xpost IDK - to be honest I barely know what was in my TOS when I signed up. For years, the policy was that you could only see each movie once, and then last Fall they finally changed it (hence why a lot of users erroneously thought for a while that they weren't allowed to).

but clearly the TOS in place when I signed up didn't have such a clause in it, otherwise I wouldn't have seen the updated terms yesterday. *shrug*. I'm not even clear if the TOS in place expressly guaranteed you could watch each movie unlimited times or if it merely didn't have language forbidding it anymore.

I didn't care much as repeat viewings weren't what I typically used it for, as most movies I see repeat times I'm usually seeing in premium formats cos I'm a spoiled individual.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-05-08/moviepass-owner-s-cash-runs-low-as-9-95-monthly-deal-takes-toll

Helios & Matheson said in a filing Tuesday that it had just $15.5 million in cash at the end of April, and the firm has been going through about $21.7 million a month. It also has $27.9 million on deposit with merchant processors.

get it before it's gone!

lol

Can't believe I'm actually rooting for some dim-witted venture capitalist to sink a zillion dollars into a failing tech company with little chance of ever being profitable, but I've seen seven or eight movies in the past two weeks with this thing and I don't want the ride to end

I had a conversation a few months ago with someone in the movie theater biz, and he basically said, "We have no idea how they think they're going to make money on this, but as long as they're paying us full price for the tickets we don't care."

I've seen 49 movies with it this year. It stopped working for two weeks recently due to app updates, I almost had to go and buy a reading lamp

would you prefer moviepass stay like it is or would you prefer if they just started giving you money?
so now you can have a burrito instead of watching blockers or whatever.

what if I go to half the movies, but they're at a theater that serves burritos and the ticket comes with a burrito

My favorite thing about MoviePass is that their on-the-record business model is "let's lose money while you laugh at us" and their off-the-record business model is clearly "let's sell our user locations and weekend travel routes to a bunch of guys in a parking garage."

— Kaleb Horton (@kalebhorton) May 8, 2018

would you prefer moviepass stay like it is or would you prefer if they just started giving you money?
so now you can have a burrito instead of watching blockers or whatever.

the last five films I've seen at moviepass cinemas were: Suspiria (1977), Salesman (1969), L'uccello dalle piume di cristallo (1970), Some Like It Hot (1959), and All About Eve (1950). I'm happy to make a sandwich and keep seeing things like this on a big screen.

(but I also saw Blockers bcz I like 30 Rock and Ike Barinholtz in Eastbound & Down)

what's the burrito equivalent of suspiria?

What does the "some guys in a parking garage" part of that Kaleb Horton tweet mean?

i assume some kind of weird reference to tech bro data miners

HMNY is tanking. I dunno, use it while you've got it.

several good series coming home... here's hoping it at least lasts the month

coming home? coming here

why can't those fickle venture capitalists act in our favor, for once

They really need a cash injection somehow, otherwise this probably has to be the last month.

socialize moviepass

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/business/article-moviepass-competitor-sinemia-quietly-launches-in-canada/

Not nearly as good as MoviePass sounds (only at Cinemax locations right now, for starters, and much stricter limits) but...better than nothing, I suppose.

people watching these kinds of services may also be interested to know that AMC has launched an AMC-only service called A-List ($20/mo plus tax, 3 movies a week, no restrictions on format) and Alamo is testing something called "Season Pass" but is just starting it at the Yonkers location as of today so the details will probably change a lot.

if you look at the moviepass subreddits there are lots of disgruntled MP users threatening to jump ship to one of these (assuming AMC isn't just trying to bury moviepass and then kill A-List), mainly because MP's latest attempt to stem the cash bleed is to add "peak pricing" of $3-4 surcharges to "popular" movies. this is supposedly algorithmic (responding to in-demand shows in your area) but nakedly isn't (current top box office movies are just always 'peak' everywhere). i haven't encountered this because i'm on the annual plan so i'm totally content to continue spending these VC's spare millions on whatever movies. so far i've seen 56 films with moviepass since october, and since i jumped to annual very quickly my total outlay is, i think, right around $100.

I've been on Sinemia. It's got its own issues, but it's a nice backup, especially if I feel like doing IMAX or 3D or I want to see two movies in a day. (Or if I want to get a second ticket for a friend). Or if I want to pre-order a ticket, which Moviepass doesn't allow.

The peak pricing is total bullshit, but still better than paying full price. In NY it's $4.50 and applies to pretty much every movie released in the last two weeks. I'm also on the annual plan - hope Moviepass lasts through December!

AMC Stubs A-List's a great deal but it's a lot further away than many other theaters in my area, including the Alamo Drafthouse. Of course I signed up for the waitlist on that immediately, we're supposed to get notified today or soon about it.

I'm well into the triple digits at this point with Moviepass. Best year ever.

moviepass is totally going to die soon tho isn't it? it's one of those vc backed companies that has no idea how it's ever going to be money-making.

this sinemia thing seems a bit of a waste of time, basically putting in a middle-man app with adds and possibilities of things going wrong in order to save a few $ per movie

i would be happy if some level-headed person scooped up moviepass and just reset them back to their terms and price point from a year ago, where they break even on a much higher price per month. it'd be a pretty substantial new addition to my budget but now i'm hooked on going to the movies a lot more often than before. i'm spoiled basically.

I've seen 74 films on Moviepass since Christmas, and paid for another half a dozen that should have been covered but the app fucked up. It'd totally be worth it at the old pricing, and I can't be mad at surge pricing as it's only going to hurt the sort of crybabies who said the service wasn't worth it once you could only see a film once, because they just want to see the same Disney films five times in a week

xxp Average cost of a movie ticket where I live is between $13-17, and that's not counting IMAX/3D upcharges. So bulk buying them at about ~$5 per ticket, and being able to see those (along with gad-sarned 4DX which is like $30-40 a ticket!) is a steal. It'll be my go-to once MP dies, unless Alamo Season Pass ends up costing too much.

looks like we're at the end of the line - service outage since last night revealed to be because they don't have enough cash in the bank to pay mastercard, and they're taking out six mil at usurious rates just to get them through the weekend.

They reverse split the stock this week (and I think dilution, I haven't been closely tracking) but after the r/s it went from $20something and now is already in the $3s.

apparently in total freefall tonight. massive blocking of movies (initially just mission impossible but then a bunch more) and 'peak' surcharges for virtually everything everywhere. this is just going off reddit reports, i was able to go see yellow submarine no problem but i would not be surprised if the app just plain uninstalls itself tomorrow before i can get to velvet goldmine.

This was a crowded short. Wall St. bet heavily against MoviePass's continued existence.

I can't imagine any such subscription service persisting, unless created by the likes of AMC, Regal, or Cinemark.

To those that benefited, thank some idiot 20-something fund manager, and the investors he once served, for subsidizing your entertainment.

AMC’s got one now. $20/month for up to three movies a week, plus they yknow make all the money on the popcorn anyway, which MoviePass obviously did not.

AMC also doesn't pay retail ticket price for the movies; not sure how much it is but probably it's at a point where even a user doing three movies a week, every week, and not buying popcorn, is a break-even. And since almost nobody will do that consistently, it'll make money, and meanwhile it works like any other 'loyalty program' where it's just to get you inclined to pick their chain rather than another, plus: "Oh hey, I just got a notification, if we buy two popcorns the second one is half off cause of my membership" etc. etc.

Anyway, I signed up for it to lock in the price for the first few months. Not crazy about the big-chainy-ness of AMC, but it'll take up the part of my MoviePass viewing that was "hey it's kinda fun to be keeping up with blockbusters / wide release stuff again." Pretty interested to see what Alamo's ends up looking like - depending on price point that could be a dream service for me. I've used MoviePass at Alamo a TON but since their most interesting screenings are the ones likely to sell out, not being able to buy in advance was a real obstacle. And I can go back to just paying retail price at all the groovy smaller theaters in town for the really interesting movies with friends. Etc.

I saw about 41 movies thus far. I came out ahead even if it closes up shop in 5 minutes

saw considerably fewer than you guys but I bought the full year subscription from
Costco and I’ve been enjoying the bundled Fandor subscription

even so, about 20 movies in, so it’s been more than worth the gamble

Stock is in a death spiral. Maybe they'll get bought out.

Twice this weekend I was in a theater where tickets were on sale for a dozen movies, but the Moviepass app showed only one or two

see above. service is totally frozen out, couldn't see anything with it last night and it remains down today. the moviepassclub subreddit is pretty obnoxious and blinkered as a rule but the big threads there should give some sense of the extent of the issues. at this point, only e-ticketing theaters are working and nothing guaranteed with those either. one of nyc's just vanished from the list in the last hour. countdown to shutdown.

i just snagged an e-ticket to see blindspotting tonight, woo! strong likelihood it is the last ticket i'm ever able to get through MP but i thought the same thing saturday so who knows.

this is going to make a great magazine feature

i think there's still a ghost of a chance that some other party buys the service for the sake of the user base and massively retools it. maybe regal or cinemark uses it to kickstart their own in-house thing. maybe some korean conglomerate determines a way that it works well in east asian markets. i feel like the only financially sustainable model (if way, way, less seductive to consumers) is more of a "coupon book" deal where you're paying a subscription in order to get a small number of cheapish tickets. this is basically how sinemia works, just no one has heard of them. that would still require a lot of legwork, and partnerships with theaters to bring down the cost to them of said tickets, and would never retain the massive user numbers moviepass had over the past year when it was just burning money giving people tickets.

the problem is that if AMC keeps their service in existence, and if regal rolls one out, that kind of satisfies the needs of the bulk of american moviegoers. a far lower-profile niche service catering to big-city movie buffs like yours truly, with a much higher monthly fee but helping you secure tickets at all the non-chain and small-chain options, might have an audience. a very small audience. that's what moviepass's subscriber base was for years. but it could be that scooping up moviepass is so cheap now that turning it into that is still a viable moneymaker. idk.

https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2018-07-30/nobody-pays-attention-to-fx-fees

MoviePass is a service where you pay them a monthly fee that is less than the price of a movie ticket, and in exchange they will buy you all the movie tickets you want, at full price, and make it up on volume somehow. For a while the market’s reaction to that business model was along the lines of “I don’t understand how that works but whatever the new economy is pretty interesting,” but then eventually the reaction shifted to “hahaha well that can’t work.” As public perception shifted, MoviePass’s parent company, the unpromisingly named Helios and Matheson Analytics Inc., announced that its financial situation was fine because it had an “equity line of credit” that could cover its cash burn. An “equity line of credit” is a somewhat head-scratching notion, and it turned out that Helios and Matheson was just referring to a program where it could try to sell stock from time to time, and maybe someone would buy it.

This is conventionally called an “at-the-market offering,” and unlike a line of credit, it doesn’t really guarantee any funding. For instance, one problem with it is that the more stock you sell, the more you drive down your stock price, and the more stock you need to sell to raise the same amount of money. (Similarly, the worse your business gets, the more money you need, but the lower your stock price is.) Helios and Matheson’s stock is down about 98 percent for the month of July so far. It did a 1-for-250 reverse stock split on Wednesday so its stock price wouldn’t be too comically low. Its equity market capitalization, as of 10 a.m. today, was about $2.1 million. It is hard to raise millions of dollars selling stock when your market cap is $2.1 million. Also it’s in trouble with its payment processors, and “service went down Thursday after the processors stopped clearing payments for MoviePass.”

So it got a loan. For $6.2 million. The terms have a payday-loan severity:

"Investment firm Hudson Bay Capital Management can demand repayment of more than $3 million of the loan on Aug. 1, and the rest on Aug. 5. Proceeds from a planned stock sale must also be used to repay the debt.

"If Helios and Matheson Analytics fails to pay, it will be subject to a 15 percent annualized late fee until it makes good on the obligation. If the company is 48 hours late in its payment, Hudson Bay can require the company to repay the debt at 130 percent."

It’s a strange loan. (Here are Friday’s 8-K and the promissory note.) Hudson Bay paid Helios & Matheson $5 million for the $6.2 million note, meaning that even if it gets paid back on time—with no late fees or penalties—then the company is paying 24 percent interest to borrow money for like a week. Not 24 percent annualized; 24 percent for the week. Normal public companies do not pay that sort of rate to borrow $6.2 million for a week.

But you can see the logic. Helios & Matheson wants to sell stock, to pay for its operations and, now, to pay off that Hudson Bay note. (The proceeds of the at-the-money offering have to be applied first to pay off the note.) Once the payment processors shut off MoviePass and the business seizes up, there is really no more selling of stock. But if you can borrow money for just a little while, you can keep the business going and sell a bit more stock, and then … I dunno … maybe things will turn around?

I am not sure why anyone would buy the stock in that scenario, but then it’s not like anyone is. The stock is down about 80 percent since the loan was announced. The plan, as far as I can make it out, seems to have been to get a little money to stabilize things so that the company could sell more stock. It didn’t work.

Is there any way someone's using this as a way to do some halfassed money laundering or they're wheeling money out the back door?

There's no conceivable way it'd ever work as pitched and I kind of assumed there's a shell game going on that we're not privy to. Maybe there's a fake theater in their system and a bunch of false accounts that keep "seeing movies" there?

I mean people had assumed it was the user data that was valuable and not the movie ticket scheme. I never used Moviepass but I did trade hmny a lot last year. I've been out of it for some months though.

unless they figured out a way to magically harvest a lot more user data than it seems, there is absolutely no way they'd make any money. the amount of cash outflow, even if people did only see two movies a month on a $10/month plan, is ridiculous!

Xpost Spouse also traded it and quite frankly made a killing.

Meanwhile I’m just glad I could score an e ticket to eighth grade for tonight.

would either of you like to invest in my company? we sell magic beans

It depends, how many subscribers do you have to your magic bean menagerie?

The premise - after the big price drop last year - was essentially twofold:

1) acquire millions of subscribers and turn this fact into money somehow. The big hope was to be able to say to the major chains, look, we direct millions of people to your theaters, cut us in on the popcorn. Or: through targeted advertising and incentives within the service ("peak pricing") we can direct people to particular movies (appealing to distributors) or underpopulated showtimes (appealing to exhibitors), so please cut us in on cheap tickets and some of that sweet, sweet popcorn money. This didn't work for a number of reasons, most obviously that the theaters don't need help getting people to go see hit movies, and for non-hit movies, the MoviePass users are coming anyway because the ticket is effectively free to them. Something similar applied to hopes that their data would be useful in and of itself; probably they imagined they could be a Netflix Algorithm of Movies, and find a buyer for "people who watched Atomic Blonde were more likely to see Red Sparrow, especially after we pushed an ad for it to their phones," or something. But it's not clear how useful such data would ever be, particularly when everyone knows this is data for the subset of people who are paying $9.99 a month and can see literally any movie they want, and common sense already suggests that people who watched a bunch of superhero movies were statistically likely to go watch more of them. Even if that was worth something, it would never be worth enough to offset paying full retail price for every ticket.

2) at the same time, gradually reduce the bleed (while maintaining that tempting subscriber base) by introducing changes to the service that aren't severe enough to drive everybody you've hooked, but still make it better than buying dozens of full-price tickets (potentially) for a single $9.99 fee. They did implement some of these changes, and some of them were reasonable (if buggy) particularly requiring photographic ticket verificiation and limiting you to seeing a given movie only once. Both of those limited scalping of MP tickets, and Marvel zombie repeat viewing. Frankly, they should have implemented them right along with the price drop, instead of suffering months and months of "I saw Justice League four times on MoviePass!" They'd still have been losing money hand over fist for a year, but not as badly. Other features, like the "peak pricing" system, came too little, too late, and the laughable rollout (and sad attempt to make it look like an algorithmic "peak" rather than just charging you arbitrarily for whatever movies they felt like) made them look desperate. Hell, they could have done the price drop with an overhaul to "see one movie a week" and still gotten huge subscriber numbers - and probably way more 'gym membership' effect as people's weeks get busy and they let that particular week go by with no movie.

So basically, as written, the $9.99 version of MoviePass was almost always doomed, but its creators whipped up a vague cloud of potential that sounded interesting enough for some "disruption" minded investors to throw a fortune at it and watch it turn out to fail. In the meantime the masterminds got paid - that's the real scandal, if you're looking for one! I prefer to see it as a year-long period in which an app intended for world domination of the movie business instead served to transfer a whole lot of cash from sucker venture capitalists to theaters, and at least some of those theaters were scrappy repertory and art-house operations. Not the worst thing ever to come from Silicon Valley.

quincie, right on, it's a good film! be sure and screenshot the e-ticket QR code (or write it down if it's an alphanumeric code) in case the app is taken down today or something.

Good point, I will do that now!

oh ---- and a lot of ppl talked about it being like a gym membership, where you end up not going as much as you imagine, but the differences between the two things are so numerous that if nothing else the MP saga should become a parable for false analogies to gym memberships.

it was basically
1. offer an insanely good deal
2. build a gigantic user base
3. ???
4. profit

they pitched a lot of ideas for #3 but they were all insanely dumb

the one that movie companies actually paid for was promotion, but that premise -- which still didn't work -- was basically to put the squeeze on theaters by making it look like some films were getting more traffic than they would in a moviepass-less world, so maybe the theater holds on to your crappy movie for another week, or hoping that people go to movies based on box office receipts instead of reviews or word of mouth

it's basically the scam where books get on the bestseller list because the writer or the publisher went out and bought a shitload of copies of their own book

Most of silicon valley is a bro swindle.

the fact that one of the movies that paid for promotion was the Travolta John Gotti biopic that got abysmal reviews is a pretty good indicator of the viability of that scheme

I am trying to sit on my hands and not be tempted to buy some shares on speculation that they might be saved.

Yerac, EXACTLY

STOP BUYING INTO THE BRO SWINDLE STOCK

like every time you trade stock for a company that went public with no real profit model, all you're doing is jacking up rents in San Francisco and fucking people over

I was curious if the company started by someone I knew in high school went public and breathed a sigh of relief when I checked and determined it hasn't. I ran into him in town probably six years ago, when they'd been live a year or two, and he seemed completely uninterested in cashing out. Just wanted to build something that would actually be able to float on its own. Not saying he won't jump on that gravy train, but... man is he an outlier at this point

if we all pooled what we each spent on coffee and ice cream cones in a single day, ilx could become the majority shareholder

I guess it's maybe more ethical to buy stock in MoviePass's parent company than a guaranteed stable company like Raytheon or some shit, but bleh

I made a lot of money on it last year. It redbox and netflix ties. But it was also extremely low float when I was trading it.

I find the idea of "ethical" companies hilarious. Like if you sign up with Wealthsimple and see who they consider "ethical" (there's an option you can select to restrict you to stocks/funds designated as such) and then you drill down on what the funds are made up of, there's Amazon and Bank of America, etc. There are certainly degrees of evil, certainly, but by their very nature a company cannot prize ethics over profit.

brb moving my retirement fund into 100% bonds out of disgust

I don't know if there can truly be an ethical company. By virtue of going public, you have huge financial companies as bookrunners and you are serving investors first (over employees, clients).

a company can be ethical, a corporation almost certainly cannot

My employer was bought by a corporation several years before I started here, and even after a long time, the difference in employee viewpoints is a contrast from similar companies, partly due to the number of long-term coworkers who were here back in the 90s when it was still a private business. We were able to escape a lot of corporate shenanigans for a long time because some canny people in upper management were able to show it was more efficient and actually cheaper to do a lot of things in-house instead of outsourcing or contracting.

walked into the shutdown at 21:30 on Thursday night when I was trying to catch Blindspotting at an AMC multiplex on the way home from a 1930s screwball at the art museum. It was tagged as surge pricing, with a $6 fee, but wouldn't process that charge.

got in OK for the same 21:45 session on Friday night.

Saturday morning: evening screenings of lots of things were at surge, Mission Impossible was all greyed out. Planned for a 14:50 Eighth Grade at a Regal multiplex, left the house at 14:45, went to log in at 15:01 as I approached the theatre, and it had gone up to surge pricing after the official start time.

Sunday morning: surge pricing on most sessions all day, the 11:20 Eighth Grade was spared. Got in.


Today:

The Regal is IRL screening Eighth Grade, Equalizer 2, Hotel Transylvania 3, Incredibles 2, Jurassic Park 5, Mission Impossible 6, Mission Impossible 6 In 3D, Sicario 2, Ocean's 8, Identical Strangers Three, Skyscraper, and Won't You Be My Neighbour?
All Mission Impossible screenings are greyed out. I can't see if sessions are unsurged on Eighth or 8, because I've seen them already. Sicario only has one screening scheduled, at 21:25, and it is unsurged. The other seven films are not showing at all.

The AMC is IRL screening Ant-Man & The Wasp, Blindspotting, Detective Dee: The Four Heavenly Kings, Hereditary, Jurassic Park 5, Mamma Mia! 2, MI:6, MI:6 3D, Skyscraper, Sorry To Bother You, Teen Titans GO! To The Movies, and Unfriended: Dark Web.
All Mission Impossible screenings are greyed out, as is Detective Dee: The Four Heavenly Kings. I can't see if sessions are unsurged on Blindspotting or Hereditary, because I've seen them already. Unfriended has two sessions scheduled, neither are surged. The other seven films are not showing at all.

The nearby arthouse disappeared off Moviepass altogether two weeks ago.

The revival house has their 7pm Honey I Shrunk The Kids available, their 9pm Aliens is not showing up.

An indie to the south had every session on surge on the weekend; today their screenings of Three Identical Strangers and Sorry To Bother You are available, but Ant-Wasp and Mamma Mia are not showing up.

An indie-chain to the north yesterday had Mission Impossible and The Incredible greyed out, and The Catcher Was A Spy available. Today, MI is greyed out, Incredibles is available, and the Paul Rudd spy movie is not showing on the app.

forgot to add: Saturday's surge pricing had gone up to $8. still half of a full-price ticket.

Moviepass sent me a surveymonkey this morning about whether I would have seen Blindspotting without moviepass, whether the trailer on the app influenced me, if my movie companions included a non-subscriber etc, so they're still looking to leverage the data ongoing

App was ass today, started working miraculously around 9 PM. I went to go see a 35mm screening of Clint Eastwood's THE GAUNTLET. Good times.

Moviepass sent me a surveymonkey this morning

We are from the future and it is for toddlers

their new pitch to investors: "we're going to lose money slightly less quickly" : https://www.reddit.com/r/MoviePassClub/comments/93ekqe/official_press_release_moviepass_accelerates_plan/

but, amazingly, shit seems to be fully functional today, depending what movie you actually wanna see

short version of plan:

1. raise price to $15/month, keep on with surge pricing
2. morph into IndiePass by restricting access / focus on cutting deals with small theaters and distribs since obviously amc/regal are never gonna happen
3. something something data
4. ???
5. profit!

i am totally okay with this if it keeps the lights on. by far the biggest benefit to me is unfettered access to all the little art house and repertory options in nyc. they'll shed blockbuster nuts by the truckload but those are probably their most useless users for the long shot (imo doomed) plan of making themselves valuable in a "we can boost attendance and word of mouth for your $15 million film" niche.

I might get this for the two months I am in NY. But at the same time, it's such a chore to deal with movie theaters there.

how so?

I love running into Doc Casino at the movies, but I am not gonna carry a phone just for this precarious thing. I see enough films w/out it anyway.

If a movie is popular at all you need to get there at least 30 minutes ahead of time to get a decent seat. The closest movie theater to me is I think AMC about a 20 minute walk away, otherwise dealing with the subway just to see a movie is not my thing. Also, I might be slightly traumatized from seeing roaches on the wall of one in midtown and then a year later seeing that they had bedbugs.

Oh, although I used to love going to the Momi for movies when I was a member.

Idk about NYC but an increasing number of screening types at chain theaters in Canada have reserved seating options - not sure if those work w/ Moviepass though

yeah, the packed house thing is a real thing. honestly one of the best features of alamo and metrograph is that really only the very front row is too close to take in a pinch, and MG has the balcony for their bigger screen. (both also have reserved seats if you buy online, tho that's not an option with moviepass since they're not e-ticket partners). the quad OTOH has like 25% inhabitable seats per screen and the rake of the floor is so shallow that someone sitting down two rows in front of you can block the picture. their programming is fantastic though. virtually every seat in the angelika is, i believe, actually inside of a rumbling subway car. but overall morbs is correct, the main redeeming feature of nyc's theaters is discovering at the end of the movie that you've been sitting next to an awkward ilxor on a date.

also, totally off the moviepass radar, no reserved seating, but absolutely essential: film forum and spectacle.

my office temporarily moved really close to the film forum and i've been bummed they've been closed all summer

but i guess that ends tomorrow!

Going by yourself is easier, but yeah once you have people with you it becomes a whole stressful thing of getting there way too early to find seats together and the awkwardness of people saving way too many seats with jackets/bags.

yeah that's fair!

pic.twitter.com/xUevXXw9ck

— Nick Wiger (@nickwiger) July 30, 2018

went by the theatre at 11am to get a ticket for the 7pm Across The Universe

For anybody forced to verify ticket purchases, is anybody really looking at that shit?

I have forgotten about five times (cos it's not something I am used to), submitted the wrong ticket twice, submitted a picture of my right leg and my middle finger and no restrictions placed

That's clearly why they're going under, thanks a lot.

Last night i managed to successfully check into a theatre 5 miles away and use it to buy a ticket at another theatre which is the only way I could buy a Teen Titans ticket as Incredibles 2 was the only eligible movie

The idea was that the ticket stubs were being OCR'ed and auto-checked, and ones that failed that were going to people being paid an absolute pittance through Amazon's creepy "Mechanical Turk" program. It's possible that MP is no longer paying for the latter service and the stub verification is currently a sham.

The Regal is IRL screening Eighth Grade, Equalizer 2, Hotel Transylvania 3, Incredibles 2, Jurassic Park 5, Mission Impossible 6, Mission Impossible 6 In 3D, Sicario 2, Ocean's 8, Identical Strangers Three, Skyscraper, and Won't You Be My Neighbour?
All Mission Impossible screenings are greyed out. I can't see if sessions are unsurged on Eighth or 8, because I've seen them already. Sicario only has one screening scheduled, at 21:25, and it is unsurged. The other seven films are not showing at all.

The AMC is IRL screening Ant-Man & The Wasp, Blindspotting, Detective Dee: The Four Heavenly Kings, Hereditary, Jurassic Park 5, Mamma Mia! 2, MI:6, MI:6 3D, Skyscraper, Sorry To Bother You, Teen Titans GO! To The Movies, and Unfriended: Dark Web.
All Mission Impossible screenings are greyed out, as is Detective Dee: The Four Heavenly Kings. I can't see if sessions are unsurged on Blindspotting or Hereditary, because I've seen them already. Unfriended has two sessions scheduled, neither are surged. The other seven films are not showing at all.

The nearby arthouse disappeared off Moviepass altogether two weeks ago.

The revival house has their 7pm Honey I Shrunk The Kids available, their 9pm Aliens is not showing up.

An indie to the south had every session on surge on the weekend; today their screenings of Three Identical Strangers and Sorry To Bother You are available, but Ant-Wasp and Mamma Mia are not showing up.

An indie-chain to the north yesterday had Mission Impossible and The Incredible greyed out, and The Catcher Was A Spy available. Today, MI is greyed out, Incredibles is available, and the Paul Rudd spy movie is not showing on the app.

― 16, 35, DCP, Go! (sic), Monday, July 30, 2018 2:46 PM (two days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

forgot to add: Saturday's surge pricing had gone up to $8. still half of a full-price ticket.

Moviepass sent me a surveymonkey this morning about whether I would have seen Blindspotting without moviepass, whether the trailer on the app influenced me, if my movie companions included a non-subscriber etc, so they're still looking to leverage the data ongoing

― 16, 35, DCP, Go! (sic), Monday, July 30, 2018 3:33 PM (two days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I see stuff like this and is, like, saving a few bucks worth all this brainspace on going to the movies, an entertainment literally based in escapism?

there are expensive videogames that are less entertaining than figuring out how to get moviepass to work.

gaming the system for a few bucks IS a form of escapism.

xp

xxp that's barely a footnote in the ensiclopedia

depends how many bucks a few bucks is. i'm at 62 films seen with moviepass for about a $100 outlay. approaching a $1,000 value assuming 15 a ticket in NYC. more to the point i've seen a ton of stuff i would never have seen at $15 a ticket, and i'm pretty happy with that. also when the service works halfway correctly you don't need to do all this scrambling around in the app; it's really only in the past seven days that it's become a complete maze of stuff not showing up that should be listed.

I'm too much of an Alamo stan to go back to a life without assigned seats

I think I've seen over half my MoviePass shows at a local Alamo-like theater that has e-ticketing

The only downside is they have an "aisle" seat every fifth chair and it's not marked in the MP app, so I either count manually or book the ticket at work when I'm able to double-check the seat/row to make sure I've grabbed the right one. Other than that, it's been completely seamless. I've never encountered a glitch at the local arthouse theater, either. Check in, buy ticket, done.

MoviePass's "e-ticket" theaters can offer assigned seating if that's the way that theater rolls, but they are thin on the ground. E-ticketing requires that the theater integrate its listings and ticketing directly with MP, and MP won't do that unless the theater is cutting them a deal on discounted tickets. NYC has had only three e-ticket theaters - Cinepolis Chelsea, the Roxy Tribeca, and the Landmark at 57th Street - and the last of those has recently vanished from the app. So that's not super helpful.

You can always swing by the Alamo earlier in the day, buy your ticket and pick your seat, but obviously this depends very much on distance/convenience/time/etc. Them and Metrograph are the only ones I regularly attend that do assigned seating.

You may also want to look into Alamo's own "season pass" program, when/if it rolls out past beta.

just waiting for the Brooklyn Alamo to open their video store

icymi

Our final update: pic.twitter.com/nuuUulDUrA

— Video Free Brooklyn (@vfbrooklyn) July 26, 2018

is, like, saving a few bucks worth all this brainspace on going to the movies, an entertainment literally based in escapism?

luv 2 kick back and enjoy the escapist ride of Leave No Trace and Blindspotting and First Reformed and Mother Of George

also m bison and Dr Casino OTM. I'm at 79 films, 1948-2018, from seven countries*, for $69.65 outlay so far. A multiplex ticket costs $15.50 here.

*more if you count the Oscar shorts

For anybody forced to verify ticket purchases, is anybody really looking at that shit?

Huh. Well i probably saw my last movie w them last night anyway.

My year sub doesn't end until December so I'm ridin' this thing 'til the wheel fall off. That said, if I was a monthly subscriber being forced to go to $14.99 with all these new BS rules I'd probably quit.

Looking through my MP history, it probably does trend more to escapist fare.... I guess? I've seen a lot of 'classic escapism' and older blockbusters/b-movies/genre stuff - Wages of Fear, Blood Simple, Liquid Sky, China Syndrome, Rosemary's Baby, Ms. 45, Umbrellas of Cherbourg, etc. etc. I've also seen a fair bit of contemporary Serious Films In the Conversation like 3 Billboards, Fantastic Woman, Florida Project, Sorry To Bother You, and so on. The 'toughest' thing I've watched with it was probably yesterday's screening of Barbara Loden's Wanda. Things like Barry Lyndon, Antiporno, Girlfriends, Maitresse, might be 'difficult' in some sense but are still an 'escape' in a way.

But... idk how much this matters. To me the mild hassle of dealing with the app (when it's not as dysfunctional as it has been this week) don't really add much on top of the basic scheduling thing of keeping track when all this stuff is screening. And that's worth it for the chance to see this stuff on the big screen.

What's the worst movie experience so far that being on moviepass let you shrug off as no big deal?

Super Troopers 2

Either The Foreigner or Proud Mary. Or maybe when a repertory screening turns out to be a really shitty, washed-out pink print, where it's like "that would have looked better on streaming." OTOH being with an audience is always worth something. I saw the Hong Kong action-comedy Aces Go Places a couple months back and it looked like absolute hell but it was enhanced by the big gags getting big laughs.

I saw Uncle Drew and there was screen disruption so I got another free ticket from the movie theatre itself

insult to injury

xp lol I went to go see Uncle Drew and the A/C went out before the movie started. got a free ticket, still haven't seen Uncle Drew...

How do you even watch 79 films from only seven countries?

in breaking news, America makes lots of films

my worst is a fight between Proud Mary, the first Deadpool (at a Hecklevision screening), Infinity Baby and Set It Off.

Fair enough. I guess we still only get to see a fraction.

fwiw only 24 of my 62 moviepass swipes have been for films in their initial theatrical run. in nyc at least you could easily watch a film every single day all year and it never be a new american movie. so watching x number of films from y countries isn't particularly weird. if you think sic's doing it wrong, you should check reddit, where everyone's still sore about not being able to see "infinity war" five times, and branching out to an "indie" means seeing the horrifyingly-reviewed Gotti movie with John Travolta that moviepass was pushing a while back.

36 of mine were new US films from 2017/18. (other new releases were from China, France, Russia, the UK and Australia.)

in nyc at least you could easily watch a film every single day all year and it never be a new american movie

I suspect that NYC is the only city on the planet where one could do this, with Cinefamily and the New Beverly closed in LA. in six days there in June, I felt like crying with wonder every time I looked at Moviepass.

the reddit is incredible, swarms of ppl self-righteously cancelling their service bcz they couldn't see Mission Impossible for free on Thursday. and shouting at anyone who points out that they'd still save money if they only see one movie a month.

wait no, you could still do it in LA with American repertory and three-day runs of new imports in a glorified screening room.

I'm surprised no enterprising hucksters with a couch and a projector have opened "theaters" for the express purpose of gouging moviepass.

I went to AMC A List this morning

Under a dime. I am surprised they haven't thrown in the towel.

Jordan Belfort will rescue them

Maybe ILX can pitch in to buy them out.

The list of available movies curated by Morbs

Morbs’ taste may not be catholic but it probably isn’t bad so that could work out

Half the day's screenings of the available movies are disappeared from the app today, even at a theatre with only two sessions.

Xpost it actually wasn't a jab lol

I appreciate sic’s updates itt because they are like the journal entries in a space horror game where someone is describing reality crashing down around them

hahahhaa

The pattern over the past few days has been wobbly showtime appearance/disappearance during the day, then a total voiding ("there are no more showtimes") around 6 or 7 PM. Get them tickets early! They really should change the message at least - it just invites hostility to see a multiplex with dozens of shows as "there are no more showtimes." But the whole enterprise is a doomed mess: they're slashing showtimes to save dough by reducing use, while trying to sell themselves to theaters and distributors as a powerful force that puts tons of people in seats.

interestingly, the "no more showtimes" has been happening about 6-7pm on the west coast too, despite eg their helpline historically operating only on NYC time

I wonder how many app programmers they have left, and if they are making payroll

https://www.reddit.com/r/MoviePassClub/comments/951e7o/official_press_release_moviepass_launches_new/

The new model, starting mid-month: still $9.95/month, BUT limited to three movies a month, BUT without "peak pricing." Movies beyond the 3 get upcharged. People on annual plans still enjoy their old terms until renewal time. Essentially they're trying to massively cut down the cash burn by reversing the entire "see a movie every day!" angle but that was always preposterously unsustainable. It's now only severely unsustainable so hey... So long as this is enough to keep them afloat (or restore some shred of confidence so they can sell their currently worthless stock), and so long as they don't purge the arthouse and indie options, I'm pretty happy with this.

I'd still take it. $10 for 3 movies is better than the alternative, full price. The peak pricing was a major hassle for my friends on the monthly plan. Also, at least I'll get the full service until my yearly runs out.

Problem is them shutting off all off the showtimes by 7 PM every weekend for the past two weeks, which is pretty infuriating.

They don't have daytime showtimes available either, so it only currently works for cinemas that sell tickets in advance, and that you're also able to visit eight hours before the session.

I assume they have no employees left because how else would they make payroll at this point

in nyc at least you could easily watch a film every single day all year and it never be a new american movie

I suspect that NYC is the only city on the planet where one could do this

never been there, but Paris, maybe?

I believe my taste is pretty catholic; commercial Hollywood stuff didn't reach 95% garbage, imho, til the last 10-15 years, and i like plenty of 20th-century 'mainstream' movies.

Paris was my assumption for runner up but I have no real idea how broad subtitled and repertory exhibition is amongst their famously numerous theatres

You know what they call a Moviepass in France?

in nyc at least you could easily watch a film every single day all year and it never be a new american movie

I suspect that NYC is the only city on the planet where one could do this

never been there, but Paris, maybe?

Counting repertory theaters you could do this in Copenhagen as well and probably in every other European capitol there is.

In today's limiting of available sessions, they have left off the revival house's 7pm screening of Goonies, which costs $10 on the door, and left on the 9:30pm Goonies, which costs $1.99.

I've already jumped to AMC A-List and like it 300 times better. yeah, it's more expensive ($19.95), the being limited to only AMC theatres sucks, so there goes any art theatres or theatres closer to me, but you get 3 movies a week free, and that includes premium showings like IMAX. plus you can buy/reserve the tix in advance, and earn rewards/etc. Also you can see multiple movies in one day (I did last night!). and you get your own dedicated concessions line, which is good for impatient people like me.

not going to replace the free showings at the local art theatre and means I'll be paying out of pocket more often for movies at other theatres but hey I'll take it.

xpost This is staggeringly common - matinees blocked when later, costlier shows aren't. What I'd expect is that the later show will *also* disappear later on; the running paranoid crank theory is that MP has rigged the app so that it'll always *look* like it's working, with some smattering of shows, but by purging shows as the day goes on, reduce the likelihood that anyone gets tickets, since only a minority of users are willing and able to go get tickets early in the day even if they realize the showtimes are likely to disappear. Characteristically, the CEO has indicated their intentions to stabilize the listings and end all this, but that's not to happen until at *least* when all the monthly subscriptions have finished the rollover to the new plan mid-September.

this might be the case, cos we were going to see Teen Titans the other night and it was in the Moviepass app seemingly up until the time we got to the theatre 30 minutes prior to show time.

P much all daytime screenings have been unavailable for a week, except yesterday. The 21:30 Goonies definitely won't be available bcz the theatre doesn't open until 18:30, and by the time the early screening is running, everything will have gone from all theatres in the app.

this place doesn't do physical tickets, either, so in the stub verification era we had to take a photo of their computer screen. (if you pre-order online, they just have your name on a list at showtime.)

has anyone on ilx been asked to re-verify their ticket stub or been questioned about it?

Neanderthal, above

as far as I can tell he got the email about it, but then proceeded to take pictures of random junk with no repercussions!

the email counts as a question

my flatmate got follow-up messages a week or two after not bothering to verify a stub, too

so they're not completely asleep at the wheel, but verification is definitely a slipshod business

Workaround for evening-only shows -- show up for intended time, activate moviepass for later showing, buy earlier time ticket, take picture of ticket with thumb obscuring the show time.

I haven't used Moviepass as much as I hoped, but the first time I was asked to verify a stub I did and the second time I totally forgot, and so far no fallout (or maybe I broke the company).

blacked out at the multiplexes today: The Darkest Minds, The Big Lebowski 20th Anniversary, MI:FO, Detective Dee: The Four Heavenly Kings, Crazy Rich Asians, and Christopher Robin.

some mid-afternoon screenings of available films are showing up, but none between 11am and 2pm.

one/off Hecklevision screening of Face/Off at the revival place not showing up :(

I've used it four times this month already, so it's doable if you're willing to suffer...

After announcing a few weeks ago that they would be shutting out blockbusters for their opening fortnights, like Christopher Robin and The Meg, instead The Meg and Slender Man are literally the only films available in Seattle this weekend. No BlackkKlansman, no Darkest Minds, no Dog Days, no Eighth Grade, no Sequelizer, no Incredibles, no Jurassic World, no Mamma Mia, no Mission, no Oceans, no Dumping Spy, no Catcher Spy, no Wayne's World, no Sorry To Bother You, no Truth Or Dare, no That or any other Summer, neither Ant-Man nor Wasp, no resurrection from the Grave Of The Fireflies, no McQueen, zero Identical Strangers.

I got the email saying I’m grandfathered into the old terms under my annual plan. I have no idea if that affects movie availability though.

I'm still on the annual plan until December, but don't think I got a special email of comfort and reassurance

movie availability is unrelated to the plan grandfathering - they're just really really aggressively restricting film options for everyone right now. the hope is that after 9/15 when all monthlies will have finished rolling over to the 3-a-month scheme, reducing their cash crisis (or maybe gradually on the way til then), they will open back up showtime availability. but we don't really know. right now it is obviously next to useless. the slenderman people cut a promotional deal with them and maybe the meg people did too.

idg the theoretical September 15 deadline tho, which is why I mentioned December, when I signed up

It seems super arbitrary even then - for instance, ok, if you're going to allow THE MISEDUCATION OF CAMERON POST, why only at Theater A and not at Theater B? Same with THE MEG.

You may have seen our previous emails about a few changes we're implementing over the next few weeks. We continue to add more new releases into the app and wider showtime availability for all users. On Monday we also announced our new $9.95 plan. To clarify, YOU ARE NOT CAPPED TO 3 MOVIES PER MONTH, you will be able to choose if you wish to continue once your plan ends on 2/6/19.

As a reminder, here are the details of your current MoviePass subscription:

You are able to see a new movie each day of the month!
You are not subject to our Peak Pricing surcharges
You may be asked to upload a copy of your ticket stub after your tickets print at the theater
If you'd like to continue your MoviePass subscription after your year is up, you'll be able to do so with our new plan. Our new plan will include up to three standard movies a month for $9.95, and you will also be eligible for $2.00 to $5.00 off any additional movie tickets purchased within the billing cycle. Discounts on additional tickets will be calculated by various factors including geography and the movie title. The remaining balance for the ticket will be charged to the credit card linked to your MoviePass account. Again, until your renewal date, you'll enjoy the benefits you've grown to love.

9/15 has to do with the monthly people having their opt-in (switch to the 3-a-month plan or quit) starting 8/15. so on 8/14, almost all of their monthly subscribers are on unlimited movies (a few suckers at some point got saddled with like a 3-a-month for $7.95 plan or something) and by 9/16, 100% of their monthly subscribers are on 3-a-month. at that point, each day they're collecting $9.95 a month from roughly 1/30th of their monthly subscribers and spending, it's hoped, way less than they are now since people will have to be choosier with their ticket picks. and, in theory, that means they will un-hide more showtimes and reduce the changing showtimes through the day to make it look less absurdly different from the real showtimes on offer from theaters.

the annual subscribers, like you and me, will continue to be a millstone until 1 year out from whenever they stopped offering new annual plans, but there will be fewer of them with each passing day.

right now, their whole game - as far as anyone can infer - is to get from one day to the next on whatever amount they get in that day from monthly charges. when they get close to that amount they kill the showtimes. until that time in the day, they're disappearing and reappearing showtimes to make it hard and confusing and probably so they have cash on hand to cover the e-ticket purchases. or something like that.

I doubt it's as fiddly as putting "new signups" on one side of a scale from "today's fees"*, they're just trying to stop people buying tickets as much as possible

*esp bcz new sign ups must be thin on the ground these weeks

rn at 02:45 p much everything is showing in the app: let's see how that's holding by 10am.

new signups don't enter into it i don't think

09:30 - no cinema in town is showing any film at all, except for one that has eight screenings of Slender Man

yeah so.... who's in for slender man????

pretty amazing how the service has evolved into three tiers: e-ticket theaters, slender man theaters, and rare oddball theaters that have only 2/3 of their offerings purged (and whose remains probably won't be there by the time you arrive). the first of these at least give me a shot at seeing Cameron Post and BlacKkKlansman this week so that's cool.

I don't know if this is true, but from what i understand, even annual sign ups are trickled out to MP on a monthly basis - so even though you paid a year in advance, the credit card company holds onto the whole amount and gives up 1/12 of it, so MP is getting revenue every day from these (as well as the normal monthly memberships).

i believe that is correct!

is there some industry-wide credit card standard for that? seems off to me

https://www.yahoo.com/news/moviepass-reportedly-enrolls-past-subscribers-231051832.html

$126 million loss in the June quarter. Shareholder is filing a class action against them for, I guess, being bad at business. HMNY trading at $0.05 today.

https://deadline.com/2018/08/moviepass-hmny-shareholder-lawsuit-quarterly-loss-1202445563/

Has shareholders suing the company for being bad at business actually ever worked?

signed up for sinemia a few weeks ago but never got a physical card and the app is a nightmare. I'm just gonna cancel - not worth the fuss. Apparently I have to really hassle them to get my refund, too.

correction: they have informed me that sinemia plans are non-refundable even though they make you pay for a year upfront lol

BS, run a chargeback through your card.

Yeah, I'm looking into how to do that.

merchant disputes (I didn't get what I paid for!!! the quality is not what was promised!!) through CC chargeback probably easier than a dispute where you indicate you gave no authorization for the charge at all and the company does.

good luck!

sorry to hear that abt sinemia! that sucks.

moviepass is currently a near-absolute joke. and yet I just successfully used it to see madeline's madeline, somehow - apparently one of three or maybe four non-e-ticket offerings you can see today, anywhere. who knows what it'll be tomorrow? but still worth hanging onto my annual membership and seeing what happens. i have a shred of hope that they get their finances just slightly stable enough that i can rely on it to see repertory again. alas, the bygone days of just a few weeks back!

haven't yet walked into an amc and used my a-list, but i've advance reserved a couple of things and that was really really painless. if you're in a situation where AMCs show a reasonable portion of what you wanna see / what's even available in your area, it's a "pays for itself in 2-3 movies a month" kind of deal. in NYC it pays for itself in one IMAX screening. most of what i want to see doesn't play at AMCs, but a fair number of things do.

the newest new idea: a calendar listing specific movies available each day (obv no guarantees that specific showtimes of these will be available, or will remain available as the day wears on)

I was so shocked that Crazy Rich Asians was working today that I went ahead and saw it, so I guess their evil plan worked

it failed, as the goal of all this nonsense is to suppress use and reduce expenses. better luck next time!

if I'f known that BlacKkKlansman was going to be one of today's two available movies citywide, I wouldn't have paid for Christopher Robin and gone to BlacKkKlansman yesterday ;_;

The collapse broadens: Annual members are all being converted to the 3-a-month limit, less than three weeks after being promised that quarterly and annual plans would not be affected until their next billing date. Just to be extra dickish about it, they also counted anything you've already watched this month towards the 3-a-month total, so in my case I can't watch anything until 9/6 (because supposedly I started my annual plan on 8/6, which is, surprise, false - they weren't even offering them!). Man they're determined to go down pissing everybody off despite having enabled us all to see dozens of movies for a song, it's kind of amazing.

Literally what cash are they covering the remaining debits with at this point?

I've discovered an amazing hack to ensure they promptly cancel your subscription -- brazenly watch completely different movies than what is on the app.

They offered me a prorated cancellation for my annual then i went to do it and it said i wasn't eligible. Lol.

The funny thing is that ever since things started going to hell I've been assuming each movie might be my last. I kinda don't wanna go down with THE MEG as my last selection tho. Tried to snag a Suspiria ticket this AM (during that brief, early window before they ratchet down to only the day's crap selection of movies), but the theater's outdoor ticket kiosk was down :( If they weren't counting this month's prior viewings against my account, I'd have hope of seeing something kinda good before I finish, but as is it's probably smart to take the prorated refund and run since god knows they'll probably be out of business this time next week.....

xpost bahaha, well there you go then

oh btw as far as the thread question: it will die a premature death and is not here to stay

The collapse broadens: Annual members are all being converted to the 3-a-month limit, less than three weeks after being promised that quarterly and annual plans would not be affected until their next billing date.

ha, I bothered to email support about this yesterday, assuming that it was a glitch and that I could get my remaining five months of unlimited back, even though there's only three movies a month worth watching

then I signed up for Sinemia and they asked for an extra ten bucks to activate my account any sooner than two weeks

the other moviepassy shakedown

also, Neanderthal: posts on the reddit suggest that the "not eligible" refund response is a glitch and they're supposedly rolling out a fix. but if they don't you could consider reporting it with your CC for a chargeback (which the proferred refund is obviously intended to avoid, but if they're making it impossible to get the refund...).

on one hand i'm tempted to take the pro-rated refund. real bitter about them changing the annual sub to this extent

otoh i'm almost at the point where i want to punish this company for screwing with us every single week and just make them bleed money until my sub runs out

sic don't fall for the $10 "acceleration" fee, they'll just give up the ghost in two weeks and you can start then. they're shady too but probably a teensy bit more stable then MP at this point

the question for me is, with my 3-movie limit zeroed out retroactively until 9/6, will I even get the chance to fuck with them by buying 3 tickets in september? i assume by then you will have the choice of a single movie per day and only be able to buy it from 8 to 8:15 AM. they have looked closely at how best to serve their users and are excited to announce this new direction which they hope will enhance your moviepass experience!

still - $9.99 for 3 movies is a fine deal, they just need all the showtimes to work again

yeah exactly

they have to be so, so, so broke to hope that it will help them to go through with the pure customer-alienating stinginess of making the movie use retroactive. with one week left in the month even! obviously they lose money with every single movie you see so nothing surprising there exactly but man. like they couldn't have done the math three weeks ago when they sent the "don't worry, annual plan folks, you'll be fine!" I really hope someone gets access to their financials and can write a great, chernobyl-esque account of the deepening disaster. "by august 20 it was clear that this latest measure had backfired..." etc. i'm basically picturing their leadership as coked-up armie hammer in Sorry To Bother You, totally in denial of all possible criticism of the business model. maybe a little of rainn wilson in The Meg and rafe spall in Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom. thanks for the movies, #MoviePass!

sic don't fall for the $10 "acceleration" fee

ha ha no fear

there's just a bunch of stuff at the Cinerama I wanted to see this week and tickets are $18

(No Country For Old Men, There Will Be Blood, Stop Making Sense)

Sic I’ll be at the first two of those on Saturday! I paid full price though.

I will have to because it is in less than two weeks

what seat do you have for No Country? I'll try and get nearby, gonna skip full-price Blood prooobably (once I realised it's not 70mm)

Front row balcony on audience right side

lol doxxed

I wanted to try it while I was in town but no sense in signing up now. I get kind of mad reading about people being so trashy with their membership but whatever.

Trashy not here, but like, on that buzzfeed article.

i am baffled about why you would use it to use the bathroom

another fun wrinkle: the email states that if you stay on, you won't get charged for the monthly fee until your annual subscription would have been up for renewal anyway. fine. but the email also gets the date wrong ("...you began your annual subscription on August 6...." when actually i went over in december and got billed for it in january). good luck trying to get support to just confirm when your renewal date is in their system. they just copy and paste a bunch of stock stuff that they're feeding everybody who's coming at them today.

The stock is 2 cents. What do you think you'll get?

idk something saying "i've checked and your billing date is in our system as 1/4 now i gotta go i got a million other tickets" would really be fine for my purposes

So, if i buy a movie pass now, will that speed the death?

No, that will help them. It's once you start using it that you pound nails in the coffin.

What they should've done is sold day passes for multiplexes.

Or just not been total weirdos. I did buy 200 more shares at like 10 cents as a lottery ticket. I made money (from like $8 on it's run to 30something but then lost a little when I rebought in the lower teens).

AMC the new rally

Will miss hearing about jimmy pardo's podcast mate's weekend movie passathons

What they should've done is sold day passes for multiplexes.

fuck this, it’s been fun being able to catch wide-release things that look okayish, but it was more satisfying being able to use it on rep and arthouse and doco stuff for six months

^^^

agreed totally

I am talking about it from the business perspective and sustainability. I mean great that everyone got to tap the shit out of their moviepass for 6 months. It would be greater if the model could actually survive.

they're been around for years doing the slo-mo cash burn on a monthly membership model so i think abruptly shifting to a multiplex day pass (not sure i actually get what you mean by this or who it'd appeal to) might have just meant scrapping their existing userbase on a gamble.

I've prob posted this before, and every MP'er has their own little dream scenario, but I think the survivable version would have gone something like this: stay far, far away from the "1. drop price massively to grow subscriber base, 2. ???, 3. profit!" sequence. grow slowly and painstakingly as a multi-theater pass for cinema buffs, focused on NYC, LA, Chicago, and medium-size cities that have more than one indie theater. cut individual deals, theater by theater, for slight discounts on tickets in exchange for funneling in customers via e-ticketing. fuck the major chains, they will never cut you a deal so what's the point?

keep price high and limit service to a given number of movies per month, from the get-go. so you are getting a small but breaking-even type of movie-intensive subscriber base where the model is coupon books, not gym memberships (which was always insane). it needs to be "it's $50 and if I see all four movies a month I save eight bucks! if I go up to the $100 plan and see all eight movies a month I save twelve bucks!" or whatever. those are random numbers not scaled to anything but you get the idea. focus on the kind of person who really was seeing four small movies a month --- and then your little profit margin is that there's months when they're just busy or nothing's playing that they're interested in, and they only see one or two movies, and sure, on the side, cutting small deals with small films to push them in the app, not your GOTTIS but whatever is trying to be the next three identical strangers. put some dev time into basic "people who liked x also liked this movie we're pushing" algorithms. this isn't the main business but it can be a nice side line. if you get big enough, partner with your theaters to do moviepass exclusive events for small upcharges or stuff like that. it's a slow business of intensive phone calls and face to face meetings. it doesn't scale magically (you need to put in that time and energy city by city and if you're not ready to hire a new person, you can't expand into the southeast yet)... but it could actually be a functional, mildly profitable niche business.

yeah i'm pretty sure i've posted this whole thing before... sorry. just it seems like such a textbook case of how a splashy dot-com thing that imagines a whole new magic profit sector of the economy ends up ignoring both fundamental math, and an actually superior, long-term sustainable kind of business that just isn't as sexy. obviously these bozos all got paid and i got to see the movies and several of my favorite theaters got a whole bunch of math-challenged investors' money transferred to them so hey whatever.

It was just an off the cuff suggestion. Basically, if moviepass has to pay out theaters $XX dollars for every ticket that is purchased on the app regardless of whether the person shows up maybe they should've had a price for one person to go to a cinema with numerous screens for one day. User can binge on multiple movies, stays longer to buy concessions, moviepass doesn't have to pay for every ticket at a massive loss.

yeah even at $35 or whatever the previous highest price point was, it was a great deal if you live in an American city, and an insane one if you live in NYC.

put some dev time into basic "people who liked x also liked this movie we're pushing" algorithms

their whole plan was to sell data to outside businesses, but they apparently never looked at any of their own data?

having given up and accepted the new terms (I never got an email offering me the prorated refund, and they bumped me off annual over a week ago), the app was actually working last night. so I saw The Happytime Murders at 11pm. can't believe this thing was basically in pre-production for a decade and they only wrote three jokes.

some people have been able to cancel, still doesn't work for me, reinstalled app still has server error, and that was the 'fix' they tried to get me to use.

oof...I should have at least 40% of it coming back too, cos they fucked up and charged me monthly for two months before they granted me annual and never refunded the monthly.

managed to actually use this thing last night. amazing. who knows if it'll happen again?!

have you not been able to use it for awhile?

I took a $25 refund at the end of August for the remaining 3 months of my annual plan. Probably what they wanted, but they wore me down with the ridiculous daily schedule that kept changing, making it impossible to plan ahead.
Might do A-List, right now just sticking with Sinemia for 3 tix/month.

it's just been too much of a hassle with the "movies of the day" system, and most of what i'm going to see not being on it etc. but finally checked off cameron post so hey

My annual cancellation didn't work and i had a ticket open that they failed to resolve and they tried to tell me the deadline passed

-_-

these fuckin guys

...this seems to be working again? Checked this morning and all theaters and all screenings were showing up?

there's a period every morning where every movie shows up. if you can get to the theater, and they're open or have an outside kiosk, you're good to go. they'll disappear by 8, or 9, or 9:30. this has been going on for ages.... speculation is that this is a feature, not a bug, letting them maintain claims somewhere in their marketing/terms that allude to seeing "any movie."

sinemia is now launching a $30/month unlimited plan - possibly plus little per-ticket processing fees, i'm not sure? that might be a better fit for me than AMC's deal since sinemia seems to cover a bunch of the NYC repertory etc options...

goddammit!

i think you can upgrade your plan!

i'm really tempted on this one

Moviepass withdrawal is realz

i think you can upgrade your plan!

I looked before posting and didn't see anything on their site that enabled upgrading. Totally down to if possible: just saw that the nearby arthouse which Moviepass dropped a few months ago has Reagan-era horror on Wednesdays in October/Nov and cat-related films by Marker, Mazurky, Shindo and Schrader on Saturdays in November. I haaaaaaate pre-buying online, even without the three-step complication of Sinemia, but it'll pay for itself quickly if I drop Moviepass altogether.

login to your account and go to "Extend Your Premium Membership"

i've read like three FAQs and i still don't think i understand how sinemia works. do you buy tickets within the sinemia app, or does it like, generate a one-time credit card number that you then use in fandango or whatever other booking app? i assume the latter because of people griping about paying the fandango convenience fees. but sinemia's own crappy web documentation doesn't talk about third-party booking at all. it also keeps referring to physical cards which afaict they aren't making anymore.

It's shady, no doubt. I'm only still on because I have a physical card from earlier in the year. Still, I haven't brought myself to getting A-List and forcing myself to drive an extra 20 minutes for all mainstream movies, so...

Here's how it goes:
1. You don't buy the tickets in the Sinemia app. You pick a showtime and theater. They give you a temporary one-time use credit card number.
2. You go to Fandango/Atom/the theater's website and buy using those credentials immediately. They will pay for the ticket cost, but you have to pay the convenience fee (usually $1.50-3) unless you can get them waived, which you can with certain theater chains or the Facebook workaround.
3. When you get to the theater, you check in with the app to prove you are there. They threaten to cancel your account if you don't do this.

Note - on the Elite plans, you can see as many 2D/3D movies as allowed by only one specialty screening (IMAX, 4DX, etc) every 30 days, regardless of your pay period dates.

I signed up to extend my membership to the 30-a-month plan, and it got screwed up and extended my current plan and billed me twice. Wonderful. Contacted them on Twitter to hopefully get it fixed.

that's exactly what I expected would happen if I clicked a button that says EXTEND YOUR [EXISTING] MEMBERSHIP!

yeah, but i've used the same button before to change plans.
plus, i got charged $$ for the new plan, even though i'm still on the old one

thanks, nhex! super helpful. ugh I wish it was just card-based, this all sounds so fiddley. hmmm.

so fwiw sinemia is fiddley as hell, very far from the moviepass card experience, not something i would recommend to casual acquaintances the way i did with moviepass. so many clicks, so much scrolling, waiting, re-entering information... scrolling little number-wheels to pick out the time of the showing! bonkers.

but it works and it's a return to the "see whatever i want" model that made MP in NYC so glorious. presumably it will eventually die a premature death.

oh and over in MoviePass land: i haven't followed it too closely because i'm not in this category, but apparently people who cancelled or did not "opt in" to changed accounts, are now getting emails describing a new plan that they will be automatically signed up and billed for if they do not "opt out." some have gotten two versions of the email describing two contradictory plans but the "opt out" is the amazing part.

sinemia is charging $2/movie to all canadians now.

oh yeah, forgot to mention that. doesn't seem to be a US issue yet. as it is i'm paying 1.50 or 1.75 per movie to the theater's or fandango's CC convenience fee.

DC, you don't know about the Facebook trick?

it doesn't seem to work for me, facebook.com/movies doesn't know of the existence of my repertory theaters or the movies they play, but fuck FB anyway

ah that's a bummer. if the theaters are available on Fandango or Atom they should be available, but I know both of those services have blind spots

https://www.theverge.com/2018/11/7/18073750/moviepass-staffed-by-dogs-director-of-barketing-chloe

http://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/AfR6GdtWiqYsE8katDOAK463iOs%3D/0x0%3A500x500/920x0/filters%3Afocal%280x0%3A500x500%29%3Aformat%28webp%29%3Ano_upscale%28%29/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/13406453/MoviePass_dog.png

Woof! I’m Chloe, the Director of Barketing at MoviePass. I’d like to explain why from time to time you may have had a “ruff” experience with us but it turns out that I’m a dog and I can’t talk. What I do know is that I see these humans working like crazy to make MoviePass better and better for you as fast as possible. They are so grateful for your membership and support while they work it out. We’re listening. We’re learning. We’re changing.

^the entirety of their email.

That dog must now be euthanised

yeah i stared at that email for like a full minute trying to figure out if there was some meaningful information i was supposed to be able to extract from it

Sinemia is now demanding I send them scanned photo ID to continue using the service. Seems to be something they've been rolling out irregularly to some users but not others. Hilariously, they don't even specify how to do this, and there's no web form for doing it, so I guess they expect it to just be emailed....?
Given how sketchy their whole system is (and how they keep falsely claiming their new things are specified in the TOS I agreed to) I say eff that. I expect to be initiating a credit card chargeback on them within a week. I think I got about a dozen movies out of them in five weeks' time so could have been worse, assuming I do get my annual plan dollars back.

meanwhile i successfully used moviepass to see the suspiria remake the other day, so if i can keep that up here and there, it'll soften the blow of losing sinemia, which i got to soften the blow of moviepass falling completely to pieces.

Doc, I've gotten through to Sinemia via email (support@...) in the past. You might want to try their FB or Twitter as well.
I just got on Alamo Season Pass (yuss!) so I dropped down to the 3-a-month Classic Sinemia plan for non-Alamo viewings. The 30-for-30 was nice for October though.
Still kinda tempted to do A-List on top of both of those, but I'm a madman.

Moving on to disputing my Sinemia subscription with my CC provider. Feeling a little antsy about it because the box you get to describe the issue online is nowhere NEAR big enough to explain exactly how shady these guys are being, but we'll see what happens.

Tempted to re-sign up for the $120 for a year All-Access plan (3 movies a month but all the theaters and showtimes are back) but it seems like they're probably gonna be bankrupt again in a few months. Plus the fact that you can't pay by credit card but it has to be a direct bank transfer seems pretty sketchy...

Also from what I've read it includes explicit language that they might randomly change how many movies you're allowed to see. I'd *consider* a monthly plan since I've recently been able to extract 2 or 3 movies a month from their janky, wheezing system, but no way would I sign up for another full year upfront with these clowns.

it's also been pointed out that the bank transfer, as unsettling as that is by itself, means no threat of credit card chargebacks. you're really just handing them the cash and praying they give you something in any way resembling the service advertised for any length of time.

Bank transfer only? Lol, wow they really want to be a fake gym membership
Id at least wait a month or two and see if the "all showtimes are back" thing is for real. They still need a bunch of angel investors who hope it'll be the next Netflix to survive

My final total with MP: $100 spent, 71 films seen in the theater. A dollar and forty-one cents a ticket. Granted there were a lot of hassles along the way, and since this summer it was almost useless most of the time, but man I had some great viewing experiences through this dumb thing.

i haven't seen 71 films in the theatre this decade

Between MP, the crash-and-burn Sinemia ride, A-list, and the Film Forum membership I've kept up with the last couple years, this was an all-time banner year for me on that front, probably never to be topped unless I suddenly start making a lot more money. If nothing else MP really gave me the bug for seeing everything I could. Sigh.

This year was amazing thanks to Moviepass - really living that dream of seeing movies all the time in the theater

My final total with MP: $100 spent, 71 films seen in the theater. A dollar and forty-one cents a ticket.

$90 spent*, 80 films seen, plus 8 that I'd gone to see bcz they were on Moviepass but it was down for one reason or another - so more spent on those 8 than on the other 80. God, what a year. If there were any confidence that Sinemia's new physical cards will work, the 30 dollars /30 tickets a month deal would be worth trying.

*dropped out in September, when there'd been nothing I could get into worth seeing all month (I swiped into an indie and watched Mission Impossible in the last week).

speaking of which, I tried to use Sinemia tonight and the online card was rejected - canceled, tried again, rejected again - then the app wouldn't let me cancel again

at least customer service got back to me within a half hour, refunded my service fees and gave me a "permanent" online card to use next time (much better customer service than Moviepass ever managed) but i missed the showtime of the movie i was gonna see tonight

I feel less bad about not taking advantage of Moviepass while I had it then I do having not taken advantage of Filmstruck, which had the added advantage of being in my house.

Yup

https://www.theringer.com/movies/2019/2/6/18212482/moviepass-mitch-lowe-khalid-itum-interview-2019

"The only reason anybody has issues [with us] is that, eventually, we failed,” says Lowe.

RIP Sinemia! Wow, that went even faster than expected. Glad I got my chargeback for the annual plan sorted months back, what a garbage fire of a company.

woof! that's a bummer but it was inevitable

... and they've filed for bankruptcy!

MoviePass, somehow, technically still in business

That’s all she wrote

https://www.cnbc.com/2019/09/13/moviepass-will-shut-down-for-good-on-sept-14.html

Turn in your (now useless) MoviePass card at our Concessions Stand and we’ll give you a FREE large popcorn https://t.co/Nk08w4Ke8p

— Music Box Theatre (@musicboxtheatre) September 13, 2019

death to all discounts via phone

Not so fast!

https://www.wsj.com/articles/moviepass-insider-makes-offer-for-subscription-service-11568718002

Theodore Farnsworth, chairman and chief executive of MoviePass’s majority shareholder Helios & Matheson Analytics Inc., is leading a group of investors on an offer to purchase the company’s assets, a spokesman for Mr. Farnsworth said.

On Sunday, Mr. Farnsworth stepped down as chief executive of Helios in connection with his consortium’s offer for the assets of the public data-analytics company.

The offer is for MoviePass, the company’s other brands including the movie-time-listing service Moviefone and a film-acquisition business called MoviePass Films, according to Mr. Farnsworth’s resignation letter, a copy of which was reviewed by The Wall Street Journal. ...

MoviePass’s parent on Friday said it was exploring all its options, including a potential sale of all its assets, and said it “is unable to predict if or when MoviePass service will continue.”

Mr. Farnsworth’s proposal represents the latest twist in MoviePass’s tumultuous run, which culminated last week when the theater-subscription service said it was again being shut down because the company had failed to recapitalize the business.

Husk of MoviePass up for auction, bids starting at $250,000, sez Variety.

feel like we could make that back in T-shirts

trying to brainstorm whether there's going to be another "use app to temporarily unlock a credit card account for a limited transaction" industry in the near future so I could just sit on the patent and infrastructure code until.. profit

rip

lol https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/press-releases/2021/06/operators-moviepass-subscription-service-agree-settle-ftc

god MoviePass really did feel so "of the moment", even though it had been around a while before they lowered their fee to 9.95.

They’ve been told ‘don’t do any more fraud’ and rapped twice on the knuckles.

do they even exist anymore?

Someone has ownership of Gotti, somewhere...

So this is interesting
https://mubi.com/go/us

That is an interesting idea and possibly financially stable eventually. If I lived in the city I would definitely try it

once i can move my arm again and go out, i likely will. $260 a year for 51 pairs of movie tickets is a good set up.

Seems to come with a regular MUBI subscription, for now anyway.

They launched it in the uk years ago, it was initially part of the regular subscription but now you have to pay more for it (an extra £5 a month so still not bad). I’d def go for it if there were participating cinemas where I live, but the only one that has signed on here is a multiplex that never actually shows the selected films - I had the app on my phone for over a year & only had the chance to use it like twice

MoviePass is now promising a "2.0" relaunch, with details to come on a Zoom event from the theater at Lincoln Center, next Thursday. The website now has a vague statement about the virtues of subscription-based theatergoing. I've thought for a long time that an "indie theater coupon book" model might have small but viable legs, wonder if that's what this heralds.

Gonna be kind of hard to beat the ones now being offered by AMC, Regal, Alamo, etc.

Right, which is why I'm thinking it's indie-related.... like build a nationwide IndieCard program (in the pre-show reel: "We're proud to be part of the IndieCard discount program, helping keep independent cinema alive, nationwide" ). And it gives you, like, two bucks off at every indie theater, and some profitable number of theaters each take that deal because a) they make it up in popcorn and b) it's simpler/cheaper than operating their own membership program, c) being "visible" in an app like that could actually be great marketing. Catch road-tripping arthouse types, looking for a movie date in the cute town they AirBnBed in... I don't know how many theaters would actually be on board with that, either culturally or financially, but it seems sorta plausible in my hazy imagining of the biz.

the Mubi option is looking pretty good

I love MUBI GO, although I haven't used it recently for some reason.

He explains that with the new version of MoviePass, you can watch ads to earn credits that can go toward free movies. Your phone camera will track your eyeballs to make sure you're actually watching. "What it does is it basically creates a transaction between you and the brand." pic.twitter.com/Lip0CDXPLT

— Theo Wayt (@theo_wayt) February 10, 2022

oh no

surprise: we live in the worst possible version of reality

Lol fuckouttahere with that dystopian bullshit

Clockworkorange.gif

Lol there are a million apps that already do shit like that.

lol this is the dumbest thing yet somehow

Sci-Fi Author: In my book I invented the Torment Nexus as a cautionary tale

Tech Company: At long last, we have created the Torment Nexus from classic sci-fi novel Don't Create The Torment Nexus

— Alex Blechman (@AlexBlechman) November 8, 2021

MoviePass is back!

As.... something. They won't say what it will cost, or what it will actually do, or why anyone should trust them. But SIGN UP NOW to be on the waitlist for the beta version of... whatever it is!!! The FAQ page, hilariously, is concerned primarily with questions about the waitlist, a wonderful harbinger of great communication and customer service to come.

i'm not getting it lol

don't want no short short waitlist

Only about 10 hours left to get on the waitlist!

it's probably going to be the return of Columbia House-style sales.

You get to see 12 movies for the price of 1 (with an agreement to purchase tickets to 12 more movies in the next year).

Gotta say that Alamo's own version of this is way handier.

that's the thing, Regal's unlimited plan was $22 a month for unlimited movies AND I have a Regal in town that gets at least one art film a month mere miles from me, and it lets me reserve seats in advance.

most of our theatres are chains, and the one "art" movie theatre in the city basically watered down its selection years ago to indie films that you could ostensibly see at any theatre. so I have no neeeeeed for Moviepass.

unless they come with glasses that make the movie I'm watching better.

Orlando lost out on the Alamo Drafthouse we were supposed to get due to pandemic, still bitter about that

I signed up for the waitlist because I want to know what kind of clusterfuck they’re planning

I love Alamo's, but gotta admit the AMC version is mostly better because you get to reserve more than 7 days out in advance. Only point in favor of Alamo is that it's one per day, vs AMC's 3-per-week.

Still kind of hope for Moviepass working on the odd arthouse movie theater in my area and the other non-Alamo/AMC chains.

AMCs was decent too, I cut them out when I realized I was spending too much and forced myself to decide between Regal and AMC.

In my case I have a real advantage in that the Alamo is very much my local — as in five blocks away — theater. So honestly it’s my best value for money by default

nice basement too I hear

I'm still on it, just a little disappointed about the 7-day thing and also that they started charging me $1.89 "convenience fee" for each ticket, which is straight-up petty bullshit. And the various "movie party" screenings they programmed to avoid being eligible for Season Pass. etc. But my local Alamo is much closer than the AMCs, too. Since they reopened though, they've put on a lot less "trash" cinema and 35mm screenings that I used to love.

I remember the convenience fees from when I first jumped on Season Pass, they were really irritating then too!

CONGRATULATIONS, CHICAGO!
The Chicago area is one of the first markets in which we’ll be testing the new MoviePassBETA.
Here’s how the new MoviePassBETA will work:
In the coming weeks, we’ll send out exclusive access codes to create your account and sign up for your desired plan. To ensure we are able to meet demand, a limited number of access codes to the MoviePassBETA will be sent at a time. When you receive your code is based on your place in the waitlist.

Once you’ve received your access code, you’ll be able to sign up for one of these plans:

Basic - $10 (1 - 3 movies per month based on peak or off-peak times)

Standard - $20 (2 - 4 movies per month based on peak or off-peak times)

Pro - $30 (3 - 5 movies per month based on peak or off-peak times)

*Prices and credits per tier may vary per market. This is a beta launch so prices and levels are subject to change based on customer and market feedback.

Each tier provides you with credits that you’re able to use at any movie theater that accepts credit cards. The cost of each film varies based on demand and time of the week.

Start going to the movies the same day at supported e-ticketing theaters. Once you get your MoviePass card in the mail, activate it in the app, and go to any theater that accepts credit cards!

It’s our goal to use this beta period to work out the kinks and provide extraordinary service. That’s why we look forward to your feedback as you use the new MoviePass BETA

That… is underwhelming.

But my local Alamo is much closer than the AMCs, too. Since they reopened though, they've put on a lot less "trash" cinema and 35mm screenings that I used to love.

Cunning to have a system that provides worse value the more you spend.

https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2022-11-07/moviepass-was-not-a-good-business

The theory was that there were a lot of new marketplace businesses with strong network effects and winner-take-all dynamics, so it was crucial to get lots of customers quickly. If you could do that, you would lock in a leading position in the business, and your customers would come to rely on you. And then you could work out the unit economics — most obviously by raising prices, though you could think of other ways. Perhaps you would achieve some economies of scale when you got really big. Perhaps you could strike some sort of deal with your suppliers to lower your costs. In particular, there was a popular view that customer data was really valuable — “the new oil” — and that if you ended up with a lot of data about a lot of customers you could find some way to make money with it. Sell ads to other money-losing startups, maybe.

This theory sometimes went by the name “blitzscaling,” and it was part of the bull case for big-name startups like Uber Technologies Inc. and WeWork Inc. It was particularly associated with the venture investments of SoftBank Group Corp. and its Vision Fund. But the name that I often used for it around here — which I borrowed from Kevin Roose at the New York Times — was “the MoviePass economy.” Not because MoviePass was the first or biggest company to use this model, but because it was the funniest and most obvious example. When you take an Uber, you don’t really know whether Uber is making or losing money on the transaction. When you saw a movie with MoviePass, you knew.

I totally forget MoviePass even re-launched. Was that article a (second) obituary?

The article mentions (with this NPR link) that it’s coming back “but in a much less funny form.”

it's being rolled out in single cities as test markets and you get "credits" to spend on movies where the price varies depending on popularity, so i'm so it seems like they're actually trying to turn a profit this time

Yeah, I knew it was coming back; Chicago is one of the test markets, and I had an invite, though I had no interest in getting a membership. I just wasn't sure if all that had happened already and the service quickly died a second death.

Wait what pic.twitter.com/koC0ATwTvQ

— Alec Stapp (@AlecStapp) January 8, 2026

I'm surprised if it's not upthread, Matt Levine was writing about it at the time too.

I think people might have been angrier about it if most of the customers weren't locked in at an insanely cheap rate. If you ran into some problems, it's cool. You're still feeling like you're pulling off a scam!