MoviePass Is Back With $18 Billion Big Screen Ambitions

By CultureBanx Team

  • Stacy Spikes has revived MoviePass with 3 pricing tiers: $10, $20, or $30 per month
  • The U.S. movie theater sector includes about 4,600 establishments with combined annual revenue of about $18B

Three years after the collapse of MoviePass, the company’s original co-founder Stacy Spikes has revived and remixed the company. Long gone are the days of MoviePass’ unlimited movies, instead prices will vary depending on the user’s home market. People on the company’s waitlist can choose among 3 pricing tiers: $10, $20, or $30 per month, according to Insider. With subscription movie-going here to stay, is now the right time for Spikes to resurrect MoviePass in a sector in a sector that includes about 4,600 establishments with combined annual revenue of about $18 billion?

Why This Matters: MoviePass has partnerships with 25% of theaters in the U.S., according to the company, each user subscription option will give the user a number of credits to use each month to see movies. As theatergoing rebounds in a post-pandemic world, companies like Regal, AMC (AMC -0.77%), Alamo and other theaters that have since created similar services to MoviePass. Spikes said in 2019 that a failed deal with AMC, which went away when Adam Aron became the theater chain’s CEO, doomed MoviePass for good.

Let’s preview how MoviePass got to this place. Once heralded as a darling of innovation in the stagnated movie theater industry, MoviePass’s rise and fall is worthy of a big screen viewing (queue Mark Wahlberg’s production group for a documentary). For a company that many people thought was too good to be true, with its unlimited movie $10 monthly pricing, they were right. In January 2018, Spikes was ousted from the organization.

A fall from the subscription movie mountain top quickly ensued, when MoviePass’ parent company Helios and Matheson Analytics saw the platforms users base plummet from more than 3 million members to about 225,000 as of April 2019, according to Variety.

Spikes was granted ownership of MoviePass assets by a New York City court back in November 2021 for $14,000, after Helios and Matheson Analytics filed for bankruptcy in 2020. All of this is shocking considering Reuters reported the company had once taken in investments led by a former Netflix (NFLX +2.22%) executive of $27 million.

What’s Next: Spikes was previously trying to launch a “Pre-Show” feature on the new MoviePass platform. It was going to be another way for movie-goers to earn credits by watching ads and having their eyeballs tracked. At the time Spikes noted the goal of MoviePass’ credit system is to help movies fill theaters on slower days. For example, in-demand movies at prime times will require more credits, whereas matinees of less popular films won’t need as many.

MoviePass says it had over 460,000 signups to its waitlist within 24 hours. On Labor day beta users were able to order movie tickets through the app or can wait for their MoviePass card to use directly at a theater. Since ‘caring is sharing’ users who made the beta cut are also being given 10 friend invites to use MoviePass.  


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