The MoviePass saga continues. Last week, in the wake of serious financial troubles, the subscription service announced sweeping changes to the dismay of pretty much all of its customers. They would be increasing the price to $14.95 per month, new releases wouldn’t be available for the first two weeks of release, and surge pricing would continue. Well apparently scratch all that, because now MoviePass is changing course yet again.
The service announced today (via WSJ) that it is not going to be raising the price, and that the $9.95 per month subscription fee will remain. Moreover, it’s abandoning the new release blackout as well as surge prices. So that all sounds great right? Well here’s the catch: With MoviePass, you can now only see three movies per month.
Granted, $9.95 for three theatrical experiences is still a bargain, but this is a far cry from what movielovers initially signed up for. MoviePass’s CEO explained the change by saying that according to their data, most of their 3 million subscribers only saw three movies a month anyway, so this is just lowering everyone down to that average.
The idea here is for MoviePass to be sustainable as a business, and to eventually turn a profit. The corporation has been in pretty dire straights over the past couple of months, so I’ll be curious to see if this latest change evens things out. Or even if this latest change sticks—they’ve been so wishy washy, it’s hard to tell what’s permanent. It does feel like they lost a lot of subscribers with last week’s changes, so it’ll also be interesting to see if folks come back.
These new changes will take effect on August 15th, and MoviePass subscribers who see more than three films a month will receive a discount of $2 to $5 a ticket if they purchase it through the MoviePass app. Meanwhile, AMC recently launched its competitor service AMC Stubs A-List, which charges $19.95 per month for the ability to see three movies a week.
So where do you fall, folks? Do these changes make MoviePass more attractive? Sound off in the comments.
