Troubled theater subscription service MoviePass is rejiggering its subscription plan once again. The company announced via press release that, due to consumer feedback, it won’t be raising the monthly subscription fee to $14.95 a month. Instead, things are staying at $9.95.
The baddish news is that the $10 month plan is shifting from unlimited to three movies a month. Beyond that, the pass will offer “up to a $5.00 discount for any additional movie tickets.” As the company noted earlier, the move is aimed at “protect[ing] the longevity of our company and prevent[ing] abuse of the service.”
The company says the newly updated plans will include “many” major first run films from studios, wording that appears to confirm MoviePass’ plans to limit access to certain blockbusters, a trend that began with the latest Mission: Impossible film. For the time being, however, it’s agreed to suspend Peak Pricing and Ticket Verification to help appease existing users who are migrated over to the new plan.
The company adds in today’s announcement that “Because only 15 percent of MoviePass members see four or more movies a month, we expect that the new subscription model will have no impact whatsoever on over 85 percent of our subscribers.”
While those numbers are likely true, and $10 a month is still an objectively good deal to see three movies in the theater, the unlimited plan is what hooked many users in the first place. Between a seemingly ever-shifting approach to pricing, multiple outages and an uncertain future, the company’s last few months have no doubt left many users wary of the service.
A number of competitors have also embraced MoviePass’ initial wave of popularity. AMC Theaters launched its own in-house version of the plans, while Sinemia offers something more akin to the new MoviePass model, including two movies a month for $9.95. MoviePass, however, maintains that this latest move will help ease some of the extreme growing pains it’s experienced as the service has taken off, burning a massive sum of cash in the process.
“As is true with any new company, we’ve evolved to accommodate what has become an unprecedented phenomenon,” CEO Mitch Lowe says. “We are now creating a framework to provide the vast majority of subscribers with what they want most – low cost, value, variety, and broad availability – and to bring some moderation to the small number of subscribers who imposed undue cost on the system by viewing a disproportionately large number of movies. We believe this new plan is a way for us to move forward with stability and continue to revitalize an entrenched industry and return moviegoing to everyone’s financial reach.”