We all know of at least one subscription service for movies or television shows. They make great ways to see content we want to see with a simple price point and with sharing options across a household or across multiple platforms, and each subscription service for streaming typically has slight variety in what they offer in order to stay competitive. But before streaming was such a common option, there were ideas like MoviePass.
In 2011 one of the biggest platforms for movie access was MoviePass, which was at the time a bit ahead of its time in concept and execution. MoviePass was similar to the idea of having streaming, but instead it circled around movie theaters and in person movie viewings.
You were able to use this company’s platform as a monthly paid service that allowed subscribers to purchase movie tickets through them up to once a day. It essentially made movie theater tickets more accessible and slightly cheaper at the time.
But, as with many other great ideas over the years, MoviePass did in fact have some flaws in its business model and went under around 2019 from debt. This was partially because of the amount of popularity it had during that time and partially because of big business issues.
The years 2017 to 2019 were at an all-time high for the subscription service, and it tried its best to stay up. But September 2019 was when MoviePass unfortunately shut down. And since then, most people pivoting to streaming platforms forgot all about it.
Here comes the interesting news though! MoviePass as a company announced its coming return via email this year, with early signups planned to open in late August and the official launch happening on Labor Day.
Why did MoviePass fall apart, and what is there to expect now? Well, in 2017 the company got new management. And that meant that prices for monthly service went way down. The platform became only $10 a month, which was close to ticket prices at the time.
And even worse for the company’s budget, subscribers were able to buy up to one movie ticket a day. You can probably already imagine why that made things quite downhill for debt of the company very quickly.
But, you would get a neat debit card from MoviePass that was loaded with the amount of money for a movie ticket and could effectively use it as your payment in theaters to see movies. So how will this add up in modern setups of the pricing and use?
Now, the model seems to have three price tiers to help repair the setup a little. How many movie tickets per month hasn’t been released yet, but depending on region of use of your service you would pay between 10 and 30 dollars a month to have MoviePass.
And there will still be the debit card setup for using this to purchase tickets, with a new card design. For now, only waitlist members and those invited by somebody on the waitlist will be allowed to use the platform since it’s a soft opening that they don’t want to go downhill.
Other than that, we’re not sure how the business will go this time around. There are high hopes for it, since no other service like this truly exists at the moment and it definitely has the demand. Before going downhill the service had millions of users, and if they can figure out costs it should go really well this time around. Who knows? Maybe we’ll see a big return of MoviePass in the coming year or two, with less of the previous downfalls and debt hopefully.