On the other hand:
Honestly, I’m surprised the cancellation rate only doubled, but I’m not clear what the baseline is - is that just from 27 July or from before the start of the changes.
If MoviePass is stable again in nine months I would consider resubscribing for a $9.99, 3 movies, no restrictions plan.
But I don’t think that will happen, I think that’s still going to be a losing plan for MoviePass, just maybe a more gradual decline.
Share price is up 40%. To 10 cents. It was over $8,000 nine months ago.
My girlfriend tried to use her MoviePass over the weekend to see Mama Mia, but it wasn’t available at any nearby theater. The only movie available in ANY nearby theater was was Slender Man. Apparently a lot of other people are reporting they can only see Slender Man, The Meg, or Mission Impossible. I’m fine with being limited to 3 movies a month since I don’t see that many movies anyway, but at least let me see what I want to see.
What is weird about MoviePass is… i thought it was just a credit card. How can they just flat out refuse payment?
MoviePass was always set-up strangely, required you to go buy tickets in person… just a big hassle, but I was under the impression they just give you credit card and release funds to it.
You’re correct about how MoviePass works for the actual transaction, I think delirium is saying that the MoviePass app wouldn’t let them select any other movies to activate the card for the transaction. A (broken?) issue with MoviePass, not a restriction being imposed by the theater.
A few weeks ago they were still intentionally restricting/not allowing certain movies at certain times, but yeah, as I understand it the move to 3 movies per month was supposed to lift the restriction on which movies those were.
Almost sounds like someone just goofed and restricted things this weekend to only allowing the high profile movies, sort of the opposite of before.
Well, days later and it’s still only giving me SlenderMan at any theater in Northern Virginia. A handful of DC movie theaters that offer E-tickets seem to have the normal movie selection available. But getting into the city and parking and everything is a hassle I’m not willing to endure for ‘free’ movie tickets.
Hah, what a joke. Apparently the service went down again this weekend, so yeah, they’re taking drastic measures because otherwise they won’t even make it until the new 3-movie plan is in effect for everyone.
“Unfortunately, in order to stay financially stable we’ve had to curtail the service,” Lowe said. “We had to right the ship as far as the amount of money we were burning.”
The new move was designed to help the company limp along until mid-September, when all of its monthly users will have been moved to a new plan that limits them to three movies a month, Lowe said.
I stand by enjoying MoviePass while it lasted, but everyone should be cancelling at this point in my opinion.
If it survives, three movies per month if you can see any you want, isn’t all that bad. We have a chain here with a monthly program for $20 that lets you see three movies a week. Good deal if you can find enough big releases you want to see. I have a bit of trouble with that.
Latest H&M financials are out, unsurprisingly not pretty:
$220m cash burn in 1H18, $109m net loss on $124m of revenue (it would have been much higher if the share price hadn’t tanked, allowing the company to post a gain on warrants). Remarkably, they’re still recognising $79m of goodwill for the Movie Pass acquisition.
Also, several shareholder class action suits disclosed.
3/week for only $20 a month? I’d jump all over that. Especially if it included RPX (Regal’s version of IMAX.) Normal prices here are $11.14 during evening movies per adult, and $16.18 per adult on the RPX shows, and a little more still on the RPX 3-D viewings.
Not really streaming news, but who knows?
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-08-16/amazon-is-said-to-be-in-running-to-acquire-landmark-movie-chain
There’s a Landmark theater in North Seattle called the Crest. It’s been Seattle’s budget theater for decades. A few years ago they finally jacked their ticket prices… from $3 to $4.
I wonder if Amazon would keep it that way?
The future showed us Taco Bell as every restaurant… clearly they meant to say Amazon was going to take over everything. Perhaps some of the theaters will be less awful with the threat of Amazon in their space.
Here’s the link:
https://www.amctheatres.com/amcstubs/alist?rel=alist_loy_op_promo
It does include IMAX.
Man, that is a good deal if you’re a movie lover or wanting to step up your visits. Thanks for the link. My nearest AMC is a bit of a drive, but I’m now wondering what Regal has in comparison. To be honest I’ve never investigated.
If they had a reduced version that gave you 1 movie per week for half of that, I would do it. I might see 4 movies a month but I simply do not go to 12 a month. 4 a month is pushing it.
Scavenger marketing!
This is the problem I have. First of all, it’s one of time. During the week we work and maybe we can squeeze in one movie, but that’s about it. Weekends we often do other things. Movies are not our priority.
Also, the kinds of movies AMC runs aren’t really our favorites. We don’t like the jump-scare horror movies. We don’t like the rom-coms aimed at the teen crowd. We’re really not all that crazy about the superhero movies, and she especially isn’t. And so many action movies are pretty dumb. I like The Rock, but that tower movie looks dumb. We probably can’t find a combination of movies and available nights to see more than a few.
And, on Tuesdays at another chain, they have $5 night with a free small popcorn, and $2 hot-dogs and candy. So that’s our movie night. We are going to see the new Spike Lee movie this Tuesday.
A lawsuit against MoviePass by shareholders was also launched in August, and The Wrap reported at the time that the shareholders voiced similar concerns, alleging they were deceived by Helios and Matheson to “cause the plaintiff and other members of the class to purchase Helios common stock at artificially inflated prices.”
Consumers have also lost faith in the company and its rocky business. Constant changes, like subscription pricing, removing participating theaters from its program, limiting the number of movies people can see each month, and restricting the type of films they’re MoviePass membership will allow them to watch are all issues brought up by customers in recent months.
The company’s second quarter earnings report this year suggested major financial issues at the company. Operating losses have skyrocketed from less than $3 million in the company’s third quarter last year to $126.6 million this past quarter. Other dismal results, including figures that proved the company burned through $219 million in the second quarter of 2018, with only $51.4 million in assets left, were also jarring.