Moviepass is Planning to Add 3D Movies & Family Plans
During Helios and Matheson’s quarterly report (Moviepass‘ parent company) they announced some new additions to the program they are hoping to roll out soon. Moviepass has been making a lot of changes lately, including making some users take pictures of their ticket stubs. They even experimented putting a cap on the monthly movie plans. I am guessing it wasn’t very popular since they quickly changed back to their “unlimited plan”.
RELATED: My thoughts after a month with Moviepass
Details on the Additions
Moviepass hasn’t announced any firm dates but they have said they want to add a premium movie option (3D, 4D etc.) to users for an extra fee. This would be an upgrade cost added anytime the user decided to go to the more expensive movie instead of an increased monthly fee. Going to more expensive movies has already gotten a lot of members shut down by Moviepass so this would help correct that issue. This is something that Sinemia, Moviepass’ main rival, already offers as a part of their monthly plan.
Moviepass also discussed adding a family plan to their program. This is big news since there is currently no easy way to go to the movies as a family using Moviepass. Unless each person in the family has their own phone. You can not log into multiple accounts at one time or link multiple accounts to one card. Sinemia currently offers a couples plan and this would actually be taking that a step further than that.
Word of Caution
There are concerns with the Moviepass program, outside of their lackluster customer service. The quarterly report showed that the company only has enough cash on hand to cover the next month’s worth of expenses. The parent company did say they have a line of credit of over 100 million dollars and there are no concerns of the program shutting down. I would suggest sticking with the monthly plan if at all possible instead of paying for the year up front though.
Conclusion
This is a good move by Moviepass and should cripple Sinemia’s competitive advantage when talking about the premium movie market. How it ends up being implemented and the overall cost will be interesting to see.
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Something to note about Sinemia. Despite their vague language, their subscription only includes ONE premium movie a month. I have a 3-movie plan, advertised as ‘IMAX-included’ but only ONE of those three movies can be a premium showing. Whenever I see Sinemia touted as offering premium shows as part of their plan, this caveat is never included, mainly because there is NO language as to that fact unless you dig way down into their support: https://help.sinemia.com/category/is-there-a-2d-3d-distinction-what-about-4dx-or-dbox (quote: “one of your tickets can be used for either of the following technologies of your choice once every 30 days : IMAX 2D, IMAX 3D, XD, Dolby Atmos, ScreenX, Dbox, or 4DX”)
I did include that in my Sinemia review and it is even a little worse than that – it is 1 per 30 rolling days – not even per month.
Oh, man, as jaded as I am I should have noticed that language. Moviepass used to use that logic for their ‘one movie every 24 hours,’ in that you couldn’t see a 5pm movie one day if you’d seen a 7pm movie the day before.
Anyway, I’m glad you noted that. Thanks!
Their business model doesn’t make sense. I realize they are a big data company but there really isn’t much to be gleaned from their model because rather than people going to movies that interest them or they like the genres, they are just going with the “all you can eat” model and eating anything and everything watching even movies that suck that they would have never gone to if they had to pay.
I would compare it to Netflix in their early days. Back in the days when they were mailing out DVD’s in the mail. You could have as many as 2-5 DVD’s at a time but you’d return one and then send it in and they would send another. You had to be selective about what you got and actually liked it. They slowly changed their model. But Movie Pass’s model is unsustainable. As well, you have to have full “buy in” from all movie chains. And you see resistance from the big players like AMC.
So the best thing you can do is enjoy the “free” movies while you can. It can’t last forever.
Agree 100%. If it does last it won’t be in the current form. I can believe they haven’t been able to negotiate discounted tickets from theaters yet. Even if you focused on the smaller guys you would think they would be able to get some sort of kick back on it.
I think This saga is so interesting. Their stock has dropped from $32/share to 68 CENTS(.68)/share as of lately. They have also made 1.4 million dollars in concession stand deals in Q1. Not nearly enough to stack up against their approx $66mil outlay in ticket costs in Q1.
Unless saved by a corporate takeover, I don’t know if the company is willing to go into debt to that $100m credit limit. I say they go BK.
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There’s a new article in the WSJ about MoviePass today and I thought of you, Mark. And here you are, writing a new post about MoviePass.
Here’s a link to the article. You can send me an email if you don’t have access to it. (I’m assuming you have access to email addresses of commenters since we have to leave them.)
https://www.wsj.com/articles/moviepass-proves-great-for-customers-disastrous-for-investors-1526468400
Thanks Pauline – yeah not sure how long this gravy train will last but I will enjoy every last minute of it 🙂
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