
MoviePass has changed people’s moviegoing habits - pmcpinto
https://www.vox.com/culture/2018/5/7/17302706/moviepass-explained-subscription-survive-theater-make-money-unlimited-cancel-amc
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teej
I’m bullish on HMNY and moviepass. A few things many people overlook, this
article included -

1/ MoviePass does not reimburse 100% of the ticket price to all theaters. In
at least 1,000 theaters they are getting $3 back or 25% of concessions. This
number will continue to increase as moviepass proves they can drive demand.

2/ HMNY literally specializes in packaging and selling data. I think it’s a
mistake to treat them as if they don’t know what they’re doing.

3/ There are not a lot of options to deploy performance marketing dollars for
movies. Instead, most of the spend goes towards broad-reach, hard to track,
media. They can offer studios a way to spend marketing that is not only
trackable, but measurably incremental. I cannot overstate how juicy that
sounds to a person in charge of spending an $X0,00,000 marketing budget.

I feel confident they can get to $5-$10 per subscriber per month in revenue on
the backend. If they can hit that, maintain solid churn numbers, and manage
fraud, they will have a very healthy subscription business on their hands.

~~~
anilshanbhag
There is close to 0 percentage this company survives. The stock has fallen 40%
each day for past few days. AMC head says they don't discount tickets and
average moviepass holder watches 3 movies a month paying average $12 per
ticket. They burn 21M a month and less than that in the bank. Plus they took
money from many consumers for annual passes which will get them sued for
fraud.

~~~
jack9
Now they can't watch more than 4 (select) movies per month and no repeat
viewings. Moviepass hasn't changed anything because people generally are being
termed out of the original breakneck deals.

~~~
laken
Moviepass brought back the unlimited plan 2 weeks ago.

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HeavenFox
I live in New York, and the other day I was queuing at an AMC when I overheard
a young lady talking to her friend in amazement: "Wait, you DON'T have a
MoviePass??!!" And indeed it seems that two thirds of the customers in front
of me used one to buy their ticket. Granted this is a very skewed sample - the
theatre has reserved seating and those paying out of pocket probably bought
online in advance. But still, in a market where a matinee ticket costs $15 -
$17, if you watch movies it'd be silly NOT to get MoviePass. Surely, MoviePass
has transformed how people go to the movies here.

I know the company will probably fold sooner or later, but I surely will miss
it when it happens, and sincerely hope that the subscription model can live
on.

~~~
lykr0n
It will be interesting to see an statics on how much it has changed movie
viewership. I'm sure there are a couple of Data Scientists or Business
Intelligence people at Regal tracking attendance of Moviepass-ers, and I bet
they have a plan to introduce a subscription service the minute Moviepass
folds.

If I had to bet, MoviePass is the reason my Regal Points expire now.

~~~
johnpowell
I worked for Regal for three years. Starting as a lowly usher and quickly
becoming the projector tech for Oregon and Washington.

It is the worst run company I have ever worked for.

For example when "Something About Mary" came out we put it in theater 5. 150
seats. It was selling out every show. I was the projectionist at the time and
said we should put it in #3 which had 534 seats. The box office was turning
away hundreds of people every few hours.

I do not care about company profits. But I do care about my friends working
concessions and door and usher. If we had the movie in the right theater we
could have used more workers.

But lazy managers kept the print in #5 for weeks. Since it was a pain to swap
prints in the computers. It wasn't.. It took two minutes.

That is just one example of many. It got even worse when I had to contact
Nashville everyday to get basic supplies. It is never fun explaining why you
need a new oscilloscope to a person that doesn't know what one is.

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lykr0n
It's true. I used to have put movies into 3 categories.

1\. I'll see by myself 2\. I'll see if someone else wants to. 3\. Nope

With MoviePass, my friend group and I have been able to to add a 4th option to
that list: I'll see it if it looks interesting enough and I have nothing
better to do.

When I saw the movie Gringo, I got an email from Moviepass asking "Would you
have seen this movie without MoviePass?"

~~~
bemurphy
I'm with you on option 4. I used to spot a movie I wanted to see, and then see
it. Now I want to see a movie, and then pick the movie to see. I can't think
of too many products I've experienced such a behavioral shift from.

I'd change the title too and drop "moviegoing habits" to simply "habits". I'm
probably out on average 2 nights more a week than I used to be. I'll stop on
the way home from standing appointments to grab dinner and a movie, just to
wait out traffic. I don't think I'd ever done this before in my life.

If I owned a restaurant near a theater, I'd figure out how to be a Moviepass
affiliate, in a heartbeat. Assuming they can survive, of course.

~~~
lykr0n
For me, it's something to do and a excuse to get together for a afternoon.
None of us can feel like "shit, what a waste of money" with MoviePass. It's
kinda like if a bowling alley offered all you can bowl for $14.99/month. Do we
really want to go bowling every week? Not really, but it's an excuse to hang
out outside of work/bars.

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throwaway010718
Another potential drawback is that if I were a teenager, I would get MoviePass
and just treat the theater as my social club. If a movie was a boring drama
that targeted older folks, I'd totally MST3K it with my pals[1]. Granted, I am
formerly terrible teenager.

[1] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KW4lHnLr-
bE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KW4lHnLr-bE)

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lando2319
The issue with movie pass is it's too easy to do the math to see if the
service is worth it.

Something like Netflix or Spotify is harder to fully quantify.

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echelon
The theory is that MoviePass can strong arm theater chains once they have a
sizable audience, right? I don't see what's stopping another from stepping
into the same space. Where's the moat?

~~~
ethbro
The moat is network effects + revenue sharing with theaters.

If that happens, how is a second business going to overcome MoviePass (who
would then have the additional revenue streams)?

If it's a risky play to do first, then it's even riskier to do second.

~~~
koolba
A theater chain could easily do it. Imagine if they come out with “AMC pass”.
They’ve got the network and prime locations.

I bet they’re waiting for MoviePass to go belly up first. No point in having
to compete with a company that’s literally throwing money at them (paying full
price x3-4 per person per month to AMC).

~~~
gergles
I guess they could, but they don't seem to want to. Cinemark's competitor
gives you ONE movie (non-premium, non-3D, etc.) a month for $8.99.

Watching the ad for it preroll every time before a movie I've 'paid for' (with
MoviePass) coming on has become a running joke between me and my partner that
only people who are such luddites that they've never heard of MoviePass would
remotely think it was a good deal.

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latchkey
And in other news... [https://techcrunch.com/2018/05/09/moviepass-parent-
drops-ano...](https://techcrunch.com/2018/05/09/moviepass-parent-drops-
another-46/)

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fiveFeet
Moviepass or not, I would like to see a theater which sells concessions at
reasonable prices.

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atomical
It sounds like AMC is afraid of being blackmailed because MoviePass is a
victim of its own success. Sometimes capitalism has hilarious results.

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dboreham
Hmm...nope. I still don't set foot in a theater. Unless it's a new Star Wars
or Avatar or LOTR, but they've made all those.

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kyledrake
I only watch about 1-2 new movies a year at best. Their service charges
$10/mo. I'd rather just pay $15 one-time to watch a movie, like when I see it
in a theater. It's a good idea, but I think they need to tweak their business
model a bit if they want to bring in people like me that don't want to spend
hundreds of dollars a year to watch garbage movies full of mutant CG gorillas
punching each other.

~~~
geoffpado
Not every business needs to capture 100% of the populace in their target
market. I too only see 2 or 3 movies a year (although I basically _only_ watch
the mutant-CG-gorilla type), and I don’t have a MoviePass because it’s not
worth it to me. But I don’t think MoviePass execs are losing any sleep not
capturing the kind of person who just doesn’t want to see movies, in the same
way Ford probably doesn’t care much about people who don’t drive.

