There are going to be a LOT of stories about MoviePass in the coming weeks. MoviePass will pass away tomorrow, September 14, 2019 and a collective sign of relief will echo through Hollywood.
Most will call MoviePass a failure. Well, from a financial and business sense…yeah, it is. Big time! Providing a pass that, during it’s “prime time,” offered a movie a day at the movie theater for $9.95/month was crazy. There was no way to sustain the model…
But was that what MoviePass really wanted to do?
The answer is: well, yeah. They somehow wanted a completely asinine business model to work, but they had a secondary goal. That goal, I propose, they succeeded at. They also, as the head of AMC predicted, also provided an unintended outcome that may end movies forever. But then again, that may have been the secondary goal…
They wanted to disrupt the movie business. And they did.
They went into the movie business and showed a subscription model had some demand. But, and people love to forget this, they couldn’t get anyone interested at $20/month. So they went to $14 if I remember correctly. It wasn’t until they hit $10/month that the world went insane and bought in. So there was a market for this, but the price point where the demand was made the whole idea impossible to fund.
But thousands of consumers across the country used the service and they saved a TON of money. I had the service for 15 or 16 months which means I paid MoviePass about $160. In that time, I saw just over 100 films…about a buck and half a film. The savings were huge.
I learned something going to the movies in my local Marcus Theaters week after week, sometimes 5 days a week.
I kind of figured out I love movies but I hate the theater experience. The sound and image are superior. I’m not one of those idiots that say my home theater is better. Preposterous…but the setting sure is.
Even with Marcus’s “Dream Loungers” you still feel like you are in someone else’s house watching a flick. The food is ridiculously expensive. In the winter you sweat because you had to wear 30 layers out in the cold and then come into a warm theater. The summertime means you freeze in your shorts. People…ugh…people talk when they shouldn’t, miss half the good jokes, and scream out at the cheap jump scares and don’t react to actual suspense.
After going to the movies insanely for a little over a year, and boasting a meager amount of Marcus points in their loyalty program (I’m still shocked how miserly Marcus’s loyalty is when you drop the amount of money I did in their place. Remember the exhibitors were paid full purchase price by MoviePass during their reign.)–I have found it hard to want to go.
I saw IT-Chapter One when it came out on MoviePass, but now…I’m not sure I even really want to go. It’s a hassle. Despite all I said above about people and seats, there is one thing theaters will never be able to fix.
Showtimes. They show movies when they want to. And then they paste over 15 minutes (trust me, I know it is 15-20 minutes before each show here locally) of commercials before each show. So you waste an entire night to see one movie. In that same time, I can watch two flicks or darn close to half a season of these new bingeable seasons of TV these days. Modern movies are all over 2 hours as well, so you can’t tell the projectionist “Hold it” while you run to the bathroom and relieve your bladder. It takes so much planning…and for something that is supposed to be entertainment, a mind relaxing activity…it’s all a bit much.
So while I say a fond farewell to MoviePass, I thank it for the lesson. The lesson that movies in the theater just aren’t fun anymore. I’m breaking up with movies, but it’s not me. It’s you.