Looks like MoviePass is on the ropes.
I am just shocked. Really. A business model that involves spending more than you make on directly buying the tickets for your customers, not viable. Whoda thunk.
I always kinda expected the company existed to launder money from blood diamonds or white slavery or something. Once that’s done, it can die.
20 dollars a month is outrageously expensive. I understand it might be useful to the folks who see 3 or more movies a month but… sheesh.
I dunno, it doesn’t seem that outrageous. I guess it depends on where you live.
In my neck of the woods, a single non-3d, non-IMAX movie ticket is $14-17, depending on theater and time of day. If I was the sort of person who went to see movies in the theater more than 4 times a year, $20/mo. wouldn’t feel like a big expense.
The Dolby Cinema inside the big AMC in San Francisco is already $23 per ticket, so I would already be ahead by 3 bucks by seeing one movie there. Seeing one movie there each weekend for just $20/month is pretty good.
The main reason I’m not doing this is the lack of a family plan. I would still be ahead by taking the family to see a movie each weekend at a Dolby Cinema for the price of one movie day, but it sounds like a pain in the ass to actually buy multiple tickets.
It’s the price of maybe 3 movie tickets in my area, less in some areas. If you don’t usually want to see that many movies in a month, well, you aren’t the target audience. It’s only slightly more than, e. g. Netflix or a cable movie channel. And yeah, those will probably offer more of a selection but it won’t be current movies, in a theater. That is a meaningful difference for some.
Wow
I paid 7.75 for my last ticket; it will be 6.75 on Saturday. This pricing is so high I would have no chance to see actually reach it during the lean months. I don’t normally see three movies a month.
I am actually a movie pass member with Cinemark. I think that makes me part of the target audience.
You’re absolutely the target audience, otherwise they lose money. The target audience is the people who think they want to see that many movies, but don’t actually.
Well that’s true although they are banking on some concession purchases too I’m sure.
Sure, but they get those concessions whether you go to the cinema on a subscription basis or you buy a ticket.
Well if they are competing with Movie Pass, my understanding is part of the pitch from Movie Pass is they get more traffic to the theater. They want you to go more often, fill more seats, buy more stuff. If the theaters are pitching subs but they don’t want you to go, don’t want you to use it then… that goal isn’t the same.
So far most of the passes from the theaters themselves include discounts at the stands as well.
The idea is that an empty movie theater seat is a total waste. For theaters, getting people in the seats is more important because they can make money off the concessions. I once read a quote from a movie theater executive saying the purpose of movies is to get people to walk by the popcorn stand.
Studios don’t like it because they make their money getting 70% of the ticket sales, but they don’t get a cut of the popcorn sales.
That’s where the tension lies. Studios see subscriptions as cutting into their revenue, but theaters just want to sell as much overpriced popcorn as possible.
I subscribed to Moviepass when it was $40/month (and made it work).
Matinees are just shy of $10 and evening movies are almost $13, so I’d get value out of a $20 subscription easily enough. If we actually had any AMC theaters here I’d probably switch to at least give it a try. All Regal and independent in my town though.
Well, OK, fair. But you aren’t the audience for whom it’s actually a good deal.
I would take advantage myself but the nearest AMC theater for me, at least that’s remotely accessible by public transit, would involve two transfers and a one way transit time almost as long as the average run-time of a movie, so, yeah, no.
I don’t think they care who their audience is, as long as they have wallets.
Price surging. haha. Well what could go wrong with charge a premium for the movies people actually want to see?
People say this all the time, but if so, why to theaters in urban areas charge so much? I mean, why do they charge $14+(minimum) here is Seattle, when they should just charge $7 and sell out every show, and get those people to buy concessions? Especially if they pay a huge percentage in the first few weeks of most blockbuster releases?