MoviePass is dead (for real this time). RIP a business too beautiful to be true.



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September 14 – note it at the end of the day (where we will see bad movies).

Friday afternoon, the parent company of MoviePass, Helios and Matheson, informed subscribers – apparently, there were still some! – that the service would be closing because its "MoviePass recapitalization efforts have not been completed so far". following movie subscription service: Helios could sell the company and its assets, including MovieFone and MoviePass Films, which, incredibly and justifiably, were contributing to the financing of John Travolta's bad movie Gotti-Or could simply close the service and keep the user data collected during the last three years.

It has been a long day ahead. To be more precise, this day comes more or less since July 27, 2018, the day of Mission: Impossible – FalloutThe publication of this article, while thousands of users could not access the service. Until then, MoviePass had been the key to unlocking a cinematic utopia – a cheat code that, at its peak, costs only $ 9.95 a month to see an unlimited number of theatrical films. But the July 27th service failure exposed many of society's weaknesses and confirmed what everyone suspected in the end, but who calmed down with an infinite amount of ticket stubs and popcorn: MoviePass was too good to be true. As a Twitter account of the company insured users that the application was simply "facing technical problems", in fact, MoviePass had been prevented from using his line of credit by his bank.

"This weekend was a realization that we could not necessarily provide the service we provided, which was unlimited, all films permanently," said MoviePass executive vice president, Khalid Itum, in January (Itum left the company in March).

Despite multiple reminders, restructuring of payment plans and brand changes – shouting out the director of marketingThe company has never recovered after this day. The number of subscribers dropped, competitors such as AMC Stubs A-List appeared and MoviePass continued to weaken and cope with criticism: prevent users from canceling their subscriptions and leaving thousands of numbers exposed credit cards because an essential server was not protected by password. The fact that the service officially ends is less surprising than the fact that it was so far in 2019.

But if MoviePass' legacy will certainly be marked by these big failures, it's hard not to take this part as you would with your most stupid but most loyal and idealistic friend. MoviePass's business plan made no sense – literally: "It was like a bank that pays you a dollar for 25 cents you deposit," said Michael Pachter, an analyst at Wedbush Securities, in January – but it also created a brief moment when we felt it was a crime and a sense of community among users; just a group of low-rent criminals who are going to see The Snowman.

And more importantly, it posed real questions about the effectiveness of theater companies: if the system we currently have, the system that has won, is really what is best for consumers . The success of MoviePass – which quickly reached a level that threatened to prevent them from doing business – proves that viewers are interested in a different model from that proposed by traditional operators like AMC. And the effects of society on the industry can be seen both during its swelling and its decline. In 2018, the year of the MoviePass explosion, in-store sales rose 7% to a record $ 11.9 billion. This year, the box office is currently behind by 6.3%, despite record earnings from films like Avengers: End of the game and The Lion King. In an interview in January, MoviePass CEO Mitch Lowe said the company had accounted for 6% of all ticket sales in the first half of 2018 – and that MoviePass clearly did not have the necessary capital to buy as many tickets (and sell them later). back to users at a extreme discount), it was at least something. In the case of industry disrupters, the first to do so are rarely the last (Sinemia, one of MoviePass's first competitors, also failed this year). Some companies can imagine how to use the movie ticket subscription service in the future, but this will be the basis of MoviePass's successes and failures.

Two weeks ago – 15 days before the death of MoviePass-The fanatic was published, a film directed by Fred Durst of Limp Bizkit in which John Travolta plays a disturbed stalker with a bad haircut. It was horrible. By all accounts, that was horrible. But I would not know. The only way I would have seen this was if a tech company went bad and basically paid me.

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