MoviePass Now Costs More, Excludes Popular Movies
by EG
In an effort to stay in business, MoviePass is hiking its subscription fee by 50% and limiting which movies its subscribers can see. The moves follow a few days of service interruptions as the company ran out cash to keep the lights on. How much longer will the ride last? Read on to find out.
Embattled subscription service MoviePass said Tuesday it is raising its standard membership to $14.95 per month, a big jump up from its current $9.95 price.
"We will be raising our standard monthly price in the near future to continue providing an attractive service to our community while accelerating our path to profitability," the service said in a statement.
MoviePass addressed subscribers after they were unable to use their subscription cards Monday to purchase movie tickets, an outage that sent stock in parent Helios and Matheson into a freefall (there were also outages over the weekend). The movie service also confirmed that it will limit access by subscribers to first-run movies opening on more than 1,000 screens "in the first few weeks," such as Mission: Impossible — Fallout.
The day ended with MoviePass chief Mitch Lowe sending an email to patrons further instructing that access to showtimes for all movies may vary from day to day.
Lowe's dispatch began with an apology for the recent snafus, and ended with a pledge to be more transparent about any changes to the service. Yet his note made no mention of the price hike, which is expected to take effect soon.
"First and foremost, I want to personally apologize to each of you for the inconsistencies and unreliability of our service over the past few days. Additionally, I regret our lack of proactive communication with you during this time; we are working hard to improve the communications to our community moving forward," Lowe wrote.
He also continued to claim that MoviePass has "revolutionized the movie industry" and is responsible for a "significant portion" of the uptick at the domestic box office so far this year.
Early in the morning, shares in Helios & Matheson jumped on the NASDAQ Exchange to $1.81, from a 72 cent opening price, on news of the price hike for MoviePass, before quickly sliding back to just under 50 cents by the end of trading.
While insisting Mission: Impossible — Fallout would be made "available in the future" to subscribers, MoviePass gave no indication when. The controversial service said it will better inform subscribers on which first-run movies will be out of bounds on their first few weekends at the multiplex so they can "make plans to see a different movie."
Get the rest of the story at The Hollywood Reporter.
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