Moviepass is dead? (And I killed it?)
2018-08-06 23:20 - General
I found out about MoviePass mid/late last year. I probably saw an average of one movie per year until then. In general I'm patient, so I'm in no rush to see a movie in the theater, and the ticket price is more than I'm willing to pay for little benefit (from my perspective). But MoviePass allowed me to see effectively all the movies I could ever want, in the theater, for ten bucks a month. So I used it. A lot.
Usage
| Date | Movie | Ticket Cost |
|---|---|---|
| May | ||
| Sat, May 5 | Avengers: Infinity War | $12.00* |
| Sun, May 6 | You Were Never Really Here | $15.00 |
| Sun, May 13 | Tully | $12.00* |
| Sun, May 20 | Deadpool 2 | $12.00* |
| Sat, May 26 | Solo | $12.00* |
| Sun, May 27 | Book Club | $15.69 |
| Total: | $78.69 | |
| June | ||
| Thu, June 6 | Upgrade | $17.99 |
| Sat, June 9 | Ocean's 8 | $16.99 |
| Sun, June 10 | Won't You Be My Neighbor | $15.00 |
| Fri, June 15 | Hotel Artemis | $15.99 |
| Sat, June 16 | American Animals | $17.40 |
| Sun, June 17 | Nancy | $12.00 |
| Sat, June 23 | Tag | $15.99 |
| Sun, June 24 | Incredibles 2 | $7.99** |
| Sat, June 30 | Jurassic World | $16.99 |
| Total: | $136.34 | |
| July | ||
| Sun, July 1 | Hereditary | $12.00* |
| Wed, July 4 | Hover | $12.00 |
| Fri, July 6 | Sicario: Day of the Soldado | $12.00* |
| Tue, July 10 | Sorry to Bother You | $15.00 |
| Fri, July 13 | Three Identical Strangers | $12.00* |
| Sat, July 14 | Leave No Trace | $16.99 |
| Sun, July 15 | Ant-Man and the Wasp | $12.00* |
| Thu, July 19 | Skyscraper | $17.99 |
| Sun, July 22 | Hotel Transylvania 3 | $8.49** |
| Sat, July 28 | The Equalizer 2 | $12.00* |
| Total: | $130.47 | |
* These were E-Tickets, which MoviePass seems to get a discount on.
** These were matinees. Why did MoviePass never encourage users to go to the much cheaper matinees?
These are the ticket stubs I have lying around. I might have missed one here or there. But the long and short of it is that for these three months, while I paid MoviePass $29.85 ($9.95 × 3) they paid several local movie theaters $379.16. This is so obviously a losing proposition for them.
Death of MoviePass?
Early last month, MoviePass introduced surge pricing. With little predictability, some movies would not be included but instead come with an extra charge around $4. When this happened, I felt like I might be canceling soon. You can see an extra strong focus on the (one) local theater with E-ticketing in my watching habits over July — they are immune to surge pricing.
Then in late July MoviePass ran out of money and had a service interruption. Somewhere in there, they started forcing users to tacke pictures of their ticket stubs. (To enforce the one-viewing-per-movie rule that they added in April.) Now they've introduced more, stricter limits: from "unlimited" (one per day) to three movies per month. And very unpredictable availability (black-outs). This already started a bit. Rumors seem to be perhaps that A) every showing before 5PM (why?) and B) basically every showing of every major movie (at least for the first few weeks) will simply be unavailable. Rumors also abound about availability disappearing in the time it takes to travel to the theater.
Canceling?
I'm not happy. Honestly, I expected MoviePass to be short lived when I first subscribed. But that was just over nine months ago. It's survived this long, but the writing is clearly on the wall now. I'll probably keep it and extract what value I can. I'm probably getting $10/mo from it.
On the other hand, this past year has re-introduced me to the theater experience. Given a theater full of them, you're guaranteed to run into strangers that have no problem talking, turning on their bright phone screens, and generally making the theater experience less than it could be. Worst is the fixed time slots. You can see a heavy focus on weekend viewings above. I find it's quite rare for a weekday showing to both not be overlapping work hours, and also not force an uncomfortably early or late dinner. So many weekday movies start at right around six o'clock. Eating early enough to finish and then get to the theater is far too early. Eating after forces a nearly 9PM meal — I don't want to be stuck in the theater with hunger distracting me from the movie!
So I feel very lukewarm now. If I walk to a theater and then can't get into the movie; if I find I can't get a seat from limited availability after black-outs; if I just get tired investing my time in finding a compatible showing time — I won't be too sad if MoviePass ends up in my past.
