The movie theater ticket-subscription service, known as MoviePass, has announced a late summer return to the competitive market.
It appears that the company is taking a more tech-savvy approach, ditching the familiar red card for an app. At the urging of cofounder Stacy Spikes, who reunited with the company after being ousted as CEO in 2018, the official beta version of MoviePass will launch on Labor Day.
MoviePass will open a limited waitlist to an invite-only beta app version of the service on Thursday, Aug. 25. The waitlist will be accessible for five days. Those who are selected from the waitlist will be given privileges to invite up to 10 people in their network to the exclusive app.
They will also have access to a multi-tier pricing plan that have a $10, $20, and $30 per month option. Each plan will provide a limited number of credits that subscribers can accrue towards movie tickets by watching ads. MoviePass will not have an unlimited moviegoing option as it once did before.
Shortly after Spikes’ departure, MoviePass’ once successful business model that consisted of a “free” movie per day for the flat rate of $9.99 fell apart as the company faced fierce resistance and competition from theatrical exhibitionists, such as AMC, Regal, and Cinemark. Eventually, the company was forced to file for bankruptcy in 2019.
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Spikes claims that he was never in support of an unlimited plan.
“That idea never entered our lexicon until HMNY suggested it as a stunt to get traffic,” Spikes said in an interview with IndieWire. “That had never even come up until the summer of 2017. Never while I was CEO, ever, did I ever promote a $9.99 all-you-can-eat, go every day plan. That’s suicide.”
It didn’t help that a pandemic suffocated the entire exhibition industry, pushing moviegoers to rely on home entertainment via streaming services.
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The Labor Day relaunch of MoviePass occurs during a bleak period for the film world where the only wide opening theatrical release during that week is the Adamma Ebo directed Honk for Jesus. Save Your Soul, starring Regina Hall and Sterling K. Brown, along with Lionsgate’s limited release of Clerks III — although moviegoers can catch up on films previously released in August, including The Invitation, Three Thousand Years of Longing, and Breaking.
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