Movies MoviePass, MovieCrash - Documentary on HBO

[TwinIon]

 

HBO has a new documentary about MoviePass that has been getting a lot of press lately. It's sitting at a very respectable 87& on RT.

 

There are a few storylines the doc covers, some more interesting than others. One part of it is the story of two black entrepreneurs who found themselves on the outside of their own company. Another part is a typical story of venture capital backed grifters that live it up at the expense of everyone else. The last part is oddly about the customers that loved the service and felt betrayed by the idiots running the show.

 

Personally, I was most interested in finding out if MoviePass ever had a good business model, or if it was always a VC grift. While I think the sympathetic founders were generally arguing for the right path, my personal read is that there was only ever one small window where this business made any sense at all. At the beginning they ran a subscription that they were basically counting on people not using. At $30 a month, they were still losing some money, but at least they weren't hemorrhaging cash. Then, they briefly had a potential AMC deal in the works, which is the only time during the whole film where it seemed like an actual good business. Unfortunately for them, that deal didn't see the light of day, AMC decided to do it without them, and they went back to paying full ticket prices. From there on out, even if the (at times criminal) mismanagement of the company didn't implode everything at an incredible rate, it never seemed like there was a viable business in sight. Even if they had raised prices, it just would have been a slower death.

 

I understand why the filmmaker chose to constantly cut to MoviePass superfans that adored the service, but I don't know if it added much. Of course people liked it that some idiots were using venture capital to make seeing movies really cheap for a while. People liking a thing doesn't prove that it's a particularly good business.

 

I also feel like if they wanted to recognize the founders for something, it would be proving out subscription theater tickets as a model. No, it doesn't really make any sense for a third party to do it, but last quarter 48.6% of AMC's us attendance came from subscribers.

[GeneticBlueprint]

35 minutes ago, TwinIon said:

The last part is oddly about the customers that loved the service and felt betrayed by the idiots running the show.

 

 

 

I mean only the most naive users couldn't see the writing on the wall the moment they signed up. I was a day one user of the broader rollout and my attitude going in was "I am going to bleed this dry and it will be good while it lasts". Same with everybody else I knew.

[TwinIon]

31 minutes ago, GeneticBlueprint said:

I mean only the most naive users couldn't see the writing on the wall the moment they signed up. I was a day one user of the broader rollout and my attitude going in was "I am going to bleed this dry and it will be good while it lasts". Same with everybody else I knew.

I agree, but I got the impression that the filmmakers were trying to use those customers to imply that the grifters here were destroying something great. As if we were robbed of a wonderful product existing just because Mitch and Ted (the CEOs of MoviePass and its parent company) were criminal and stupid. Don't get me wrong, it seems pretty clear that their obvious failures and potential criminality did kill the company, but their insane strategy of bankrolling millions of people's movie tickets with VC money was also the only reason that people ever really cared that deeply for it.

[EternallDarkness]

On 6/7/2024 at 12:54 PM, GeneticBlueprint said:

 

 

I mean only the most naive users couldn't see the writing on the wall the moment they signed up. I was a day one user of the broader rollout and my attitude going in was "I am going to bleed this dry and it will be good while it lasts". Same with everybody else I knew.

 

No doubt, everyone could see it was not a sustainable model, but I enjoyed it while I could. 

[LazyPiranha]

I don’t think there was ever a sustainable path forward because eventually every theater would realize they could cut out the middle man and take all the money for themselves.  
 

My guess is most people probably have one theater they go to all the time and they’re not shopping venues.  Outside of travel, I’ve gone to the same movie theater exclusively for years now.  If your preferred theater has a sub service, why would you ever opt for a third party option?  Yeah, chain hopping might be a nice option for an extremely niche handful, but you can’t possibly build a profitable audience off of those people alone.  
 

Even if moviepass somehow managed to get some massive, impossible to ignore user base, all theater chains would have to do is offer their own plan for slightly cheaper and moviepass would die.  You can’t build brand loyalty when you’re offering literally the exact some product.