MoviePass - will it die a premature death or is it here to stay

Technically the TOS explictly stated that Moviepass “reserves the right to change from time to time the number of eligible movies a member can see per month.”, though not being a lawyer, I don't know if that's airtight, or about as legally shaky as "<business> is not responsible for any damages to your vehicle if you park in our lot"

but can they change the TOS for an agreement you paid for a year in advance? if it's month-to-month i can see the loophole working, but long term it should be like a lease

the little I know suggests that such clauses almost never hold up in court, but you have to take them to court, which few are going to bother to do for a service where the annual membership was under a hundred bucks and pays for itself after 5-10 movies. so it's the kind of totally slimy lame-ass move that companies always get away with.

xpost IDK - to be honest I barely know what was in my TOS when I signed up. For years, the policy was that you could only see each movie once, and then last Fall they finally changed it (hence why a lot of users erroneously thought for a while that they weren't allowed to).

but clearly the TOS in place when I signed up didn't have such a clause in it, otherwise I wouldn't have seen the updated terms yesterday. *shrug*. I'm not even clear if the TOS in place expressly guaranteed you could watch each movie unlimited times or if it merely didn't have language forbidding it anymore.

I didn't care much as repeat viewings weren't what I typically used it for, as most movies I see repeat times I'm usually seeing in premium formats cos I'm a spoiled individual.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-05-08/moviepass-owner-s-cash-runs-low-as-9-95-monthly-deal-takes-toll

Helios & Matheson said in a filing Tuesday that it had just $15.5 million in cash at the end of April, and the firm has been going through about $21.7 million a month. It also has $27.9 million on deposit with merchant processors.

get it before it's gone!

lol

Can't believe I'm actually rooting for some dim-witted venture capitalist to sink a zillion dollars into a failing tech company with little chance of ever being profitable, but I've seen seven or eight movies in the past two weeks with this thing and I don't want the ride to end

I had a conversation a few months ago with someone in the movie theater biz, and he basically said, "We have no idea how they think they're going to make money on this, but as long as they're paying us full price for the tickets we don't care."

I've seen 49 movies with it this year. It stopped working for two weeks recently due to app updates, I almost had to go and buy a reading lamp

would you prefer moviepass stay like it is or would you prefer if they just started giving you money?
so now you can have a burrito instead of watching blockers or whatever.

what if I go to half the movies, but they're at a theater that serves burritos and the ticket comes with a burrito

My favorite thing about MoviePass is that their on-the-record business model is "let's lose money while you laugh at us" and their off-the-record business model is clearly "let's sell our user locations and weekend travel routes to a bunch of guys in a parking garage."

— Kaleb Horton (@kalebhorton) May 8, 2018

would you prefer moviepass stay like it is or would you prefer if they just started giving you money?
so now you can have a burrito instead of watching blockers or whatever.

the last five films I've seen at moviepass cinemas were: Suspiria (1977), Salesman (1969), L'uccello dalle piume di cristallo (1970), Some Like It Hot (1959), and All About Eve (1950). I'm happy to make a sandwich and keep seeing things like this on a big screen.

(but I also saw Blockers bcz I like 30 Rock and Ike Barinholtz in Eastbound & Down)

what's the burrito equivalent of suspiria?

What does the "some guys in a parking garage" part of that Kaleb Horton tweet mean?

i assume some kind of weird reference to tech bro data miners

HMNY is tanking. I dunno, use it while you've got it.

several good series coming home... here's hoping it at least lasts the month

coming home? coming here

why can't those fickle venture capitalists act in our favor, for once

They really need a cash injection somehow, otherwise this probably has to be the last month.

socialize moviepass

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/business/article-moviepass-competitor-sinemia-quietly-launches-in-canada/

Not nearly as good as MoviePass sounds (only at Cinemax locations right now, for starters, and much stricter limits) but...better than nothing, I suppose.

people watching these kinds of services may also be interested to know that AMC has launched an AMC-only service called A-List ($20/mo plus tax, 3 movies a week, no restrictions on format) and Alamo is testing something called "Season Pass" but is just starting it at the Yonkers location as of today so the details will probably change a lot.

if you look at the moviepass subreddits there are lots of disgruntled MP users threatening to jump ship to one of these (assuming AMC isn't just trying to bury moviepass and then kill A-List), mainly because MP's latest attempt to stem the cash bleed is to add "peak pricing" of $3-4 surcharges to "popular" movies. this is supposedly algorithmic (responding to in-demand shows in your area) but nakedly isn't (current top box office movies are just always 'peak' everywhere). i haven't encountered this because i'm on the annual plan so i'm totally content to continue spending these VC's spare millions on whatever movies. so far i've seen 56 films with moviepass since october, and since i jumped to annual very quickly my total outlay is, i think, right around $100.

I've been on Sinemia. It's got its own issues, but it's a nice backup, especially if I feel like doing IMAX or 3D or I want to see two movies in a day. (Or if I want to get a second ticket for a friend). Or if I want to pre-order a ticket, which Moviepass doesn't allow.

The peak pricing is total bullshit, but still better than paying full price. In NY it's $4.50 and applies to pretty much every movie released in the last two weeks. I'm also on the annual plan - hope Moviepass lasts through December!

AMC Stubs A-List's a great deal but it's a lot further away than many other theaters in my area, including the Alamo Drafthouse. Of course I signed up for the waitlist on that immediately, we're supposed to get notified today or soon about it.

I'm well into the triple digits at this point with Moviepass. Best year ever.

moviepass is totally going to die soon tho isn't it? it's one of those vc backed companies that has no idea how it's ever going to be money-making.

this sinemia thing seems a bit of a waste of time, basically putting in a middle-man app with adds and possibilities of things going wrong in order to save a few $ per movie

i would be happy if some level-headed person scooped up moviepass and just reset them back to their terms and price point from a year ago, where they break even on a much higher price per month. it'd be a pretty substantial new addition to my budget but now i'm hooked on going to the movies a lot more often than before. i'm spoiled basically.

I've seen 74 films on Moviepass since Christmas, and paid for another half a dozen that should have been covered but the app fucked up. It'd totally be worth it at the old pricing, and I can't be mad at surge pricing as it's only going to hurt the sort of crybabies who said the service wasn't worth it once you could only see a film once, because they just want to see the same Disney films five times in a week

xxp Average cost of a movie ticket where I live is between $13-17, and that's not counting IMAX/3D upcharges. So bulk buying them at about ~$5 per ticket, and being able to see those (along with gad-sarned 4DX which is like $30-40 a ticket!) is a steal. It'll be my go-to once MP dies, unless Alamo Season Pass ends up costing too much.

looks like we're at the end of the line - service outage since last night revealed to be because they don't have enough cash in the bank to pay mastercard, and they're taking out six mil at usurious rates just to get them through the weekend.

They reverse split the stock this week (and I think dilution, I haven't been closely tracking) but after the r/s it went from $20something and now is already in the $3s.

apparently in total freefall tonight. massive blocking of movies (initially just mission impossible but then a bunch more) and 'peak' surcharges for virtually everything everywhere. this is just going off reddit reports, i was able to go see yellow submarine no problem but i would not be surprised if the app just plain uninstalls itself tomorrow before i can get to velvet goldmine.

This was a crowded short. Wall St. bet heavily against MoviePass's continued existence.

I can't imagine any such subscription service persisting, unless created by the likes of AMC, Regal, or Cinemark.

To those that benefited, thank some idiot 20-something fund manager, and the investors he once served, for subsidizing your entertainment.

AMC’s got one now. $20/month for up to three movies a week, plus they yknow make all the money on the popcorn anyway, which MoviePass obviously did not.

AMC also doesn't pay retail ticket price for the movies; not sure how much it is but probably it's at a point where even a user doing three movies a week, every week, and not buying popcorn, is a break-even. And since almost nobody will do that consistently, it'll make money, and meanwhile it works like any other 'loyalty program' where it's just to get you inclined to pick their chain rather than another, plus: "Oh hey, I just got a notification, if we buy two popcorns the second one is half off cause of my membership" etc. etc.

Anyway, I signed up for it to lock in the price for the first few months. Not crazy about the big-chainy-ness of AMC, but it'll take up the part of my MoviePass viewing that was "hey it's kinda fun to be keeping up with blockbusters / wide release stuff again." Pretty interested to see what Alamo's ends up looking like - depending on price point that could be a dream service for me. I've used MoviePass at Alamo a TON but since their most interesting screenings are the ones likely to sell out, not being able to buy in advance was a real obstacle. And I can go back to just paying retail price at all the groovy smaller theaters in town for the really interesting movies with friends. Etc.

I saw about 41 movies thus far. I came out ahead even if it closes up shop in 5 minutes

saw considerably fewer than you guys but I bought the full year subscription from
Costco and I’ve been enjoying the bundled Fandor subscription

even so, about 20 movies in, so it’s been more than worth the gamble

Stock is in a death spiral. Maybe they'll get bought out.

Twice this weekend I was in a theater where tickets were on sale for a dozen movies, but the Moviepass app showed only one or two

see above. service is totally frozen out, couldn't see anything with it last night and it remains down today. the moviepassclub subreddit is pretty obnoxious and blinkered as a rule but the big threads there should give some sense of the extent of the issues. at this point, only e-ticketing theaters are working and nothing guaranteed with those either. one of nyc's just vanished from the list in the last hour. countdown to shutdown.

i just snagged an e-ticket to see blindspotting tonight, woo! strong likelihood it is the last ticket i'm ever able to get through MP but i thought the same thing saturday so who knows.

this is going to make a great magazine feature

i think there's still a ghost of a chance that some other party buys the service for the sake of the user base and massively retools it. maybe regal or cinemark uses it to kickstart their own in-house thing. maybe some korean conglomerate determines a way that it works well in east asian markets. i feel like the only financially sustainable model (if way, way, less seductive to consumers) is more of a "coupon book" deal where you're paying a subscription in order to get a small number of cheapish tickets. this is basically how sinemia works, just no one has heard of them. that would still require a lot of legwork, and partnerships with theaters to bring down the cost to them of said tickets, and would never retain the massive user numbers moviepass had over the past year when it was just burning money giving people tickets.

the problem is that if AMC keeps their service in existence, and if regal rolls one out, that kind of satisfies the needs of the bulk of american moviegoers. a far lower-profile niche service catering to big-city movie buffs like yours truly, with a much higher monthly fee but helping you secure tickets at all the non-chain and small-chain options, might have an audience. a very small audience. that's what moviepass's subscriber base was for years. but it could be that scooping up moviepass is so cheap now that turning it into that is still a viable moneymaker. idk.

https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2018-07-30/nobody-pays-attention-to-fx-fees

MoviePass is a service where you pay them a monthly fee that is less than the price of a movie ticket, and in exchange they will buy you all the movie tickets you want, at full price, and make it up on volume somehow. For a while the market’s reaction to that business model was along the lines of “I don’t understand how that works but whatever the new economy is pretty interesting,” but then eventually the reaction shifted to “hahaha well that can’t work.” As public perception shifted, MoviePass’s parent company, the unpromisingly named Helios and Matheson Analytics Inc., announced that its financial situation was fine because it had an “equity line of credit” that could cover its cash burn. An “equity line of credit” is a somewhat head-scratching notion, and it turned out that Helios and Matheson was just referring to a program where it could try to sell stock from time to time, and maybe someone would buy it.

This is conventionally called an “at-the-market offering,” and unlike a line of credit, it doesn’t really guarantee any funding. For instance, one problem with it is that the more stock you sell, the more you drive down your stock price, and the more stock you need to sell to raise the same amount of money. (Similarly, the worse your business gets, the more money you need, but the lower your stock price is.) Helios and Matheson’s stock is down about 98 percent for the month of July so far. It did a 1-for-250 reverse stock split on Wednesday so its stock price wouldn’t be too comically low. Its equity market capitalization, as of 10 a.m. today, was about $2.1 million. It is hard to raise millions of dollars selling stock when your market cap is $2.1 million. Also it’s in trouble with its payment processors, and “service went down Thursday after the processors stopped clearing payments for MoviePass.”

So it got a loan. For $6.2 million. The terms have a payday-loan severity:

"Investment firm Hudson Bay Capital Management can demand repayment of more than $3 million of the loan on Aug. 1, and the rest on Aug. 5. Proceeds from a planned stock sale must also be used to repay the debt.

"If Helios and Matheson Analytics fails to pay, it will be subject to a 15 percent annualized late fee until it makes good on the obligation. If the company is 48 hours late in its payment, Hudson Bay can require the company to repay the debt at 130 percent."

It’s a strange loan. (Here are Friday’s 8-K and the promissory note.) Hudson Bay paid Helios & Matheson $5 million for the $6.2 million note, meaning that even if it gets paid back on time—with no late fees or penalties—then the company is paying 24 percent interest to borrow money for like a week. Not 24 percent annualized; 24 percent for the week. Normal public companies do not pay that sort of rate to borrow $6.2 million for a week.

But you can see the logic. Helios & Matheson wants to sell stock, to pay for its operations and, now, to pay off that Hudson Bay note. (The proceeds of the at-the-money offering have to be applied first to pay off the note.) Once the payment processors shut off MoviePass and the business seizes up, there is really no more selling of stock. But if you can borrow money for just a little while, you can keep the business going and sell a bit more stock, and then … I dunno … maybe things will turn around?

I am not sure why anyone would buy the stock in that scenario, but then it’s not like anyone is. The stock is down about 80 percent since the loan was announced. The plan, as far as I can make it out, seems to have been to get a little money to stabilize things so that the company could sell more stock. It didn’t work.

Is there any way someone's using this as a way to do some halfassed money laundering or they're wheeling money out the back door?

There's no conceivable way it'd ever work as pitched and I kind of assumed there's a shell game going on that we're not privy to. Maybe there's a fake theater in their system and a bunch of false accounts that keep "seeing movies" there?

I mean people had assumed it was the user data that was valuable and not the movie ticket scheme. I never used Moviepass but I did trade hmny a lot last year. I've been out of it for some months though.

unless they figured out a way to magically harvest a lot more user data than it seems, there is absolutely no way they'd make any money. the amount of cash outflow, even if people did only see two movies a month on a $10/month plan, is ridiculous!

Xpost Spouse also traded it and quite frankly made a killing.

Meanwhile I’m just glad I could score an e ticket to eighth grade for tonight.