June 2011
Humble
Beginnings
It all started in San Francisco, where MoviePass
first offered folks (by invite only) a shot at their enticing movie-per-day
subscription, usable in a grand total of 21 theaters. Stacey Spikes and Hamet
Watt were the two masterminds, backed by several investors and corporations,
including the unstoppable titan of tech known as AOL.
MoviePass faced challenges. They had a
clunky operating system. And theater owners didn’t like the company, so they
refuse to play ball with their 19,000 subscribers.
MoviePass switched their
ticket-distribution system—annoying their customers with the first of MANY changes
over the next seven years—and required them to print vouchers at home, one for
each ticket.
This didn’t earn them any goodwill with
theaters, either, as it took confused box office workers forever to figure out
how to redeem the vouchers before they stopped working with MoviePass
altogether.
MoviePass was a quirky San Francisco
treat, hardly an auspicious debut for the service.
October 2012
MoviePass
Goes National
MoviePass wasn’t quite sure how much to
charge users, so they beta-tested in various markets. Subscribers paid $29-$34
each month, determined by their region.
So right off the bat, it was a pretty
amazing deal for those who knew about it and maximized their usage, getting
first-run tickets for about $1 each.
MoviePass ditched the printed voucher
system, switching to their more familiar app/card one-two punch.
AMC was the first national theater chain
to express disdain and resist working with MoviePass, a position they would
maintain to this day.
By the end of the year, Business Insider named MoviePass one of
the “25 Most Disruptive Apps of 2012” and put it on the list of the “Best of
Everything in 2012.”
December 2014
Enemies
Become Friends
After getting those mighty accolades, 2013
proved to be a surprisingly uneventful MoviePass year. The movie theater
industry in general was having a rough time, with record-low attendance and
record-low audience enthusiasm.
It’s almost like movie tickets were
ridiculously overpriced and people were fed up with the whole movie theater system—no longer impressed by
lame shiny-toy gimmicks like upcharged eye-hurting “3D”—thus making it ripe for
disruptive innovation.
Hmm…
AMC caved and finally stopped fighting MoviePass.
Catching the vision of a subscription-style model for moviegoing, AMC formally
partnered up with MoviePass in Boston ($45/month) and Denver ($35/month).
June 2016
Mitch!
Former Netflix/Redbox executive Mitch Lowe
took over MoviePass as CEO. He’d been advising them for a couple years at that
point, but all of a sudden, he was in charge.
What could go wrong?
July 2016
Trying to Get
the Price Right
After years of tentative tests and
experimenting with limited markets, Mitch’s disruption and experimentation came
fast and furious.
MoviePass tested different plans in
different areas depending on how many movies each user watched.
At one point, subscribers paid $50/month
for six movies. And elsewhere, anywhere from $40/month to $99/month for
unlimited movies. Both plans included 3D options.
MoviePass officially started offering
different plans for anywhere between $15/month and $21/month for two movies.
The bigger the city, the more expensive
MoviePass was.
December 2016
20,000!?
MoviePass hit the landmark of 20,000
subscribers.
Who could imagine that number ever going
higher?
August 2017
Gentlemen,
Start Your Engines...
Helios and Matheson, a major analytics
firm, bought a majority stake in MoviePass.
They schemed to increase membership numbers
to a point where they could leverage their user base in other financial areas
and gather comprehensive data on users’ movie interests to sell targeted
advertising. (This is what Google and Facebook do, and they charge even less
than MoviePass for their services.)
Hmm…
How would they ever pull this off?
August 15, 2017
Cinemadness
Begins
A day that will live in honor forever
among those who were blessed enough to enjoy MoviePass at its apex of
existence.
August
15, 2017: The day MoviePass dropped their price to $9.95/month for their
premium one-movie-a-day service.
MoviePass’ website promptly crashed and
new users had to wait weeks for their MoviePass cards to arrive.
But arrive they did.
And sure, there was a learning curve
involved for the app/card check-in system. But once users got it, they went on
the moviegoing adventure of a lifetime.
MoviePass lifted their restriction on
seeing a movie multiple times (contrary to a prominent article in Business Insider at the time, which
indicated the restriction was still in place).
And for a time, we lived happily ever
after, in cinematic bliss. Until...
-B.P. Kasik/Phony McFakename
(I also wrote the authoritative literary work on MoviePass, Cinemadness: Live Your Best MoviePass Life)
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