MoviePass Drops to $9.95 a Month For a Movie a Day

Discussion in 'Visual Arts' started by RayS, Aug 15, 2017.

  1. Chris DeVoe

    Chris DeVoe RIP Vickie Mapes Williams (aka Equipoise)

    My wife, who has been signed up for months, has been having difficulty using the app ever since they announced the price drop. I wouldn't count on being able to use it for several days.

    In Chicago, it's every theater except a handful - the Landmark and Arclight art house ones. Every single other theater she's tried has worked.
     
    Shawn likes this.
  2. RayS

    RayS A Little Bit Older and a Little Bit Slower Thread Starter

    Location:
    Out of My Element
    I have not been able to use the app at all since the price drop (although it looks functional this morning).

    But I've been to probably a dozen different theaters in three different states since I got the card - it has worked in all of them, including a "film society".

    Things it didn't work for: Oscar-nominated live action short films compilation, Grateful Dead Meetup at the Movies (a Fathom Event, which are all out), and a couple of Bollywood films (which often don't show up on the app). The app also has a history feature so I can tell you exactly how many films you've seen with, and on what dates - I've seen 63 films with the card since January 30th when I started. So $35 x let's say 7 months, divided by 63 = $3.89 a movie. And now the monthly price is slashed 2/3rds. That comes out to $1.29 a movie.
     
  3. Monosterio

    Monosterio Forum Resident

    Location:
    South Florida
    Is it a coincidence that last Tuesday, the day this news broke, AMC sent me an email announcing double points on my Stubs account through the end of October? I doubt it. This has "Forget all that MoviePass stuff you're hearing" written all over it. :D
     
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  4. Jrr

    Jrr Forum Resident

    What I don't get is who cares what app drives traffic to their theater, especially when they are getting the full box office price. As long as you get through the door they gotcha. They should be kissing Movie Passes feet.
     
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  5. jriems

    jriems Audio Ojiisan

    Ty for the link and all the MoviePass info. Of course, neither of the two Regal Cinemas in Gainesville accept MoviePass. Regal is the only game in town. What else is new?
     
  6. Monosterio

    Monosterio Forum Resident

    Location:
    South Florida
    This article from Business Insider may explain it:

    This is how MoviePass plans to make money with a $10-a-month unlimited plan that seems too good to be true
     
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  7. Jeff Edwards

    Jeff Edwards Senior Member

    If I understand how it works correctly, if they accept Mastercard, they'll accept Moviepass. Moviepass gives you a limited debit card onto which they load the price of the ticket when you check in on the app (within 100 yards of the theater).

    You then buy your ticket with the debit card.

    In this way, the theater doesnt elect to participate or not. The Moviepass folks say if the theater accepts Mastercard, they'll have to accept it.

    We will see.
     
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  8. RayS

    RayS A Little Bit Older and a Little Bit Slower Thread Starter

    Location:
    Out of My Element
    Yes, the entire "theaters that accept MoviePass" thing is really a myth. Any theater that takes a debit card (essentially EVERY theater) will "accept" MoviePass. It is MoviePass that eliminates certain movies and theaters from its app, making it impossible to "check in" to them.
     
    Shawn likes this.
  9. Chris DeVoe

    Chris DeVoe RIP Vickie Mapes Williams (aka Equipoise)

    My wife has had very good luck getting them to add movies that are missing from the app via the chat function - although that hasn't been working while they've been overwhelmed. She hasn't tried to get them to add theaters.
     
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  10. Jrr

    Jrr Forum Resident

    Thank you for taking the time to put up the link. Fascinating read to me. They are gambling huge to make this work. Frankly, when you are hoping others will come to you at some point and want to work with you and in the meantime you are going to go full steam ahead until that happens while losing millions of dollars....I don't know, doesn't seem like one of the better, and sustainable, business plans I've ever heard of. And I own two, so I have a background as a business centric type. How they were able to bring in investors is quite beyond me, though the people running it have quite the resume, so clearly that is what these funds are investing in, the hope that lightning will strike again. I don't see this ever working, but I know we are all happy to use the service in the meantime, for however long it lasts. We can't lose, so no worries! It's actually quite clever. I don't know, but part of me loves it when someone brilliant figures out a way around the establishment, in this case AMC. What the heck can they do about it? Thanks again for the link, and to the op for starting the thread. I will be watching closely as a member.
     
    Monosterio likes this.
  11. Jrr

    Jrr Forum Resident

    That is how I understand it, so why can't the guy a few posts above use it at Regal? Seems like it should work anywhere that accepts Mastercard.
     
  12. Chris DeVoe

    Chris DeVoe RIP Vickie Mapes Williams (aka Equipoise)

    My wife uses it at Chicago area Regal theaters. All I can figure is their theater showtimes import system is not working for your town. As soon as they get their expansion problems under control and they start answering their text messages, you should be able to alert them to the missing theaters.
     
  13. It's a Hail Mary business plan hoping to scale up fast enough before their VC funding runs out. I haven't seen anything like it since the salad days of the Dotcom Bubble era. We all know how that turned out.
     
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  14. Jrr

    Jrr Forum Resident

    Exactly! Huge payoff IF it works until they sell it off. Just see no reason for anyone to buy it. Maybe one of the chains will see a significant increase in concession sales and enter into an agreement. If that happens they could have a winner.
     
  15. Chris DeVoe

    Chris DeVoe RIP Vickie Mapes Williams (aka Equipoise)

    They have data that their members buy much more from the snack bar, something like 128% more. I know it's true in Vickie's case.

    This summers box office has been disastrous. The theater chains need something to get people back to the theaters. Is this it? Don't know if too many people are going to be like Vickie and see three hundred films so far in the theater this year, but they can see more.
     
  16. Monosterio

    Monosterio Forum Resident

    Location:
    South Florida
    How many times a month does Vickie use MoviePass, if you don't mind saying? And also, for how long has she been using it?
     
  17. puffyrock2

    puffyrock2 Forum Resident

    Location:
    Louisiana
    MoviePass didn't hesitate to charge me, but the app is useless and I haven't gotten my card. The app can't locate theaters at all....I even stood right in front my local theater trying to pull up showtimes. Nothing.
     
  18. Monosterio

    Monosterio Forum Resident

    Location:
    South Florida
    Supposedly, even though your credit card is charged, your membership doesn't start until you receive the MoviePass debit card.
     
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  19. Chris DeVoe

    Chris DeVoe RIP Vickie Mapes Williams (aka Equipoise)

    156 times so far this year. She generally sees a movie every night, and multiple ones on weekends. She can only see one per day on MoviePass, so the rest are various discounts and theaters where she is a member like the Gene Siskel Film Center, the Music Box and Facets.
     
    Monosterio likes this.
  20. Monosterio

    Monosterio Forum Resident

    Location:
    South Florida
    Well, so much for the various complaints I've read online from MoviePass members who either got cut off/limited or were charged higher fees for overusing their card. If that hasn't happened to your wife, it won't happen to anybody! :D And obviously the people who wrote those complaints made it up, or else they broke some other rule.
     
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  21. Chris DeVoe

    Chris DeVoe RIP Vickie Mapes Williams (aka Equipoise)

    She wouldn't do anything to endanger her MoviePass membership. Given her love of seeing movies in the theater, this is one of the best things that has ever happened to her. It wouldn't work for most people - possibly anyone else in the world - as she has incredibly wide-ranging tastes. Last night, she saw the Al Gore documentary An Inconvenient Sequel and The Adventurers, a Chinese/French action movie starring Jean Reno. The night before, she saw Kill Baby, Kill from seventies Italian horror master Mario Bava and Toilet: A Love Story, a Bollywood film about religion and tradition forcing women to walk miles each day to poop (3rd world problems are the serious ones.)
     
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  22. Over time, I would expect a majority of subscribers skip months here and there, and during other months go only once. It would be interesting to see usage data to see if that turns out to be true.
     
  23. Chris DeVoe

    Chris DeVoe RIP Vickie Mapes Williams (aka Equipoise)

    A lot of people have described it as a "gym membership model." In this context, my wife is that totally ripped dude who spends six hours every day at the gym.
     
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  24. audiomixer

    audiomixer As Bald As The Beatles

    I'll agree, but only in an excellent, well calibrated movie theater. I worked for a major motion picture studio in Los Angeles & went to screenings there all the time. The picture and sound was calibrated prior to every showing. This is not the case in your "run-of-the-mill" AMC, etc. mall movie houses. And, honestly, along with the smell and crunching of food & the disrespectful people in the audience talking or playing with their cell phones, it's a no-go for me.
     
  25. Chris DeVoe

    Chris DeVoe RIP Vickie Mapes Williams (aka Equipoise)

    I hear that every time, about the cell phones, etc. I don't see anywhere near the number of films my wife does, but I see at least 100 films a year in the theater, and I rarely have a problem. It would seem that she and I would be more likely to experience this given how much more often we're in the theater - every single night in her case. All I can assume is that the people who are having a terrible time are seeing films at the suburban multiplexes that we never visit (basically, we go to no theaters that can't be reached by the CTA.)

    And the 4K Sony projectors at the AMC theaters we favor look great! The only technical problems I notice tend to be speakers with warped voice coils, and I report those to the management.
     

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