Yeah it's been a **** month for movies. My options were Geostorm, Madea, and The Snowman.

You couldn't pay me to watch Madea, and Snowman somehow had a worse score than Geostorm.

However I do recommend Happy Death Day.

Sex Panther said:

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This is the downside to MoviePass... I went and saw The Snowman because I was bored and it was free.


That was a mistake...

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You knew Snowman was a mistake because the ads were everywhere.

Ready for next week and Thank You For Your Service. Tuesday night after bed time is a good time to go. No one there and I can check my phone if I get bored.

Just used my MoviePass for the first time to watch Taken 4: The Chinaman. Formulaic and predictable, but really liked Jackie Chan's performance.

the preferred nomenclature is Asian.

Expect a change very, very soon from how Movie Pass works and floor prices to change and a limit to come.

MP thought they could get theaters on board with selling a percentage of concessions for MoviePass customers and theaters have resoundingly laughed them out of the room

I'd be ok with a $20/mo price and a limit of four movies a month.

If that included IMAX, I'd be so down.

They did just change the policy that if you cancel, you can't rejoin for 9 mo. Basically closing a loop hole to not pay during slow movie months

More changes than that coming.

It wouldn't surprise me if they restricted new releases so that you could only use the pass for movies that were not going to be full anyway.

Guitarsoup said:

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More changes than that coming.

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sorry if I missed this earlier in the thread, but do you have some connection with them? you seem to have a lot of info.

I'm tight with someone in NATO.


You know, the National Association of Theater Owners.

ah ha

That blows if there are big changes coming. I was able to use it for Thor last night at Studio Movie Grill.

Noticed a "Check in if movie missing" movie at the bottom of my app when I select a movie. Seems new to me.

Also noticed 3D Thor is grayed out. Has that always been the case?

No 3D or imax allowed

I keep getting an email that says "Congrats! It looks like your MoviePass card should have arrived and your account will begin tomorrow."

I keep having to hit a button saying it hasn't arrived. I have had to do this about 5 times over the past two weeks.

Has anyone else had a similar experience?

Changes are coming because it's not a real business and they're going to run out of other people's money.

Their income is negative if people actually use the service.

I'm using it as much as possible while I can.

I've used ~18 dollars worth so far in the first month.

Not a lot of movies I want to waste 2-3 hours on, though.

Not sure how commenting on the fact that it's just another startup without a viable business model is wanting them to fail.

Yeah, it's awesome, it's literally too good to be true, at least in anything resembling a long term.
Take advantage of them all you wish.

The only victims are people who buy into an IPO.

Another injection of cash by HMNY yesterday. I get the opinions that MP's doors won't stay open for long. But the CEO is a former Netflix VP and former president of redbox. Seems like he should know the angles.

I think you'll see advertising in-app or something similar before a price hike. The priority is growing the user base - more data, more bargaining power, more eyes. Theater's margins are in concessions, not tickets. I don't see this as a major battle between them and MP.

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I don't see this as a major battle between them and MP.

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It will become an issue when MP can't pay for the tickets the users are buying.

powerbelly51 said:

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Josepi said:

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Also, I would think that theaters would be behind this. More people in the theater means more concessions on which their profit level is off the charts.

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My guess is that AMC is anticipating negative feedback when the prices have to rise and moviepass blames the theaters.

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Nope. AMC knows that this is the future commoditization of movies and it will, in the end, reduce the prices that they the theatre owners can expect to receive over time.

FIrst Movie Pass is offered...then millions join. The company becomes big and gets more powerful (like Apple with music industry) and starts to negotiate lower rates with the theatres...theatres have to buckle or they lose even more volume than they currently are.

Theatres lose control and see the eventual crashing of their ticket pricing scheme.

WestAustinAg said:

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powerbelly51 said:

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Josepi said:

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Also, I would think that theaters would be behind this. More people in the theater means more concessions on which their profit level is off the charts.

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My guess is that AMC is anticipating negative feedback when the prices have to rise and moviepass blames the theaters.

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Nope. AMC knows that this is the future commoditization of movies and it will, in the end, reduce the prices that they the theatre owners can expect to receive over time.

FIrst Movie Pass is offered...then millions join. The company becomes big and gets more powerful (like Apple with music industry) and starts to negotiate lower rates with the theatres...theatres have to buckle or they lose even more volume than they currently are.

Theatres lose control and see the eventual crashing of their ticket pricing scheme.

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I don't think it is debatable that the price of moviepass will have to increase in the future.

In app ads would need to have CPM rates in the hundreds of dollars to cover the cost of a Moviepass customer that goes to more than one movie per month.

jschroeder said:

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In app ads would need to have CPM rates in the hundreds of dollars to cover the cost of a Moviepass customer that goes to more than one movie per month.

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You're thinking traditional AdSense ads.

I'm thinking targeted ads on behalf of the actual studios and theaters. It's a unique service putting my butt in seats of movies that I never would have seen if it weren't for MP.

I would love to have in-app trailers when browsing shows/times and maybe some promo to for me to choose your theater to watch a movie.

CPM rates were around long before Adsense.

Here's the problem with your scenario, you aren't paying the cost of the ticket, Moviepass is. If the ad works, it costs MP more than they could make for showing the ad.

It's a negative feedback loop, the more ads a customer views the more they'll cost Moviepass.

jschroeder said:

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Here's the problem with your scenario, you aren't paying the cost of the ticket, Moviepass is. If the ad works, it costs MP more than they could make for showing the ad.

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MP's cost is the difference between the ticket(s) cost and your monthly subscription fee. At some point, MP is hoping for a large enough customer base to leverage lower ticket prices. They're also banking on the buffet effect: first pass through the line you watch 4 movies in a month, next month 3, rest of the year a few here and there.

If the ad works, you have no idea how much it costs/benefits MP. To have that ad on your phone, there's a decent probability whoever the ad is for, paid for data from MP to target it to your account. There's also no idea what kind of terms for shared commissions MP has and will have for concessions/ticket sales, e.g. Studio Movie Grill/MP Open Tab.

There's an angle here that we're obviously not privy to. I'm not saying their infallible, but you've got a big name Facebook investor, co-founder of Netflix/CEO of Redbox and a majority stake holder in a data analytics company. MP may very well shutter its doors, but I don't think the reason will be knucklehead company not understanding simple business economics.

They're not making money off of any of that stuff. They've been quite clear that they are paying full price for the tickets and don't have side deals on the other revenue streams you are speculating about.

Running ads would only lead to them losing more money per customer because they're the ones that would pay if the ad converts, not the customer.

edit: Regarding "well he did it at Redbox and Netflix", this is a completely different business model outside of the fact that there is a monthly subscription. Netflix and Redbox both had products they purchased one time and repeatedly distributed to customers. Never did either of those companies say they'll have to sell your information to make money.

It's all speculation: ads, alternate streams of revenue, going-out of business, etc.

I never claimed Netflix/Redbox are like MP. But nice " "s.

You can keep talking in absolutes about MP losing money on ads. Until ads actually become apart of their business model, we see what they're advertising, and they go public - we won't know. You're dismissing one type of ad: theater ticket. I'm sure Marvel would love to know if you've seen every one of their movies in theater; so they can plant a Capt. A shirt in a banner as soon as you open MP. Or, you just walked into the Marq'e with a MP purchased ticket to see Dunkirk - here's a Spotify ad to buy the soundtrack.

The ads most likely will not be for movies, but rather for goods/services targeted at people that attend certain movies.

Sorry, the " " was in reply to the others who are claiming his connections to Redbox and Netflix imply some sort of valid business model. Netflix and Redbox didn't have to resort to "we'll figure it out later" on how to make money.

The one thing that isn't speculation is that they lose money, substantial money, if people actually use the service and there isn't any sort of economy of scale in place.

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Until ads actually become apart of their business model, we see what they're advertising, and they go public - we won't know.

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Online advertising isn't complicated if you've done it. It's a numbers game. The problem is that the more somebody uses the app (and sees the ads) the more likely they are to use the service at about $9 a ticket. Facebook, with it's downright creepy level of targeting, can pull in just $20/month for a service that has people's eyeballs for 10+ hours a month.

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You're dismissing one type of ad: theater ticket. I'm sure Marvel would love to know if you've seen every one of their movies in theater; so they can plant a Capt. A shirt in a banner as soon as you open MP. Or, you just walked into the Marq'e with a MP purchased ticket to see Dunkirk - here's a Spotify ad to buy the soundtrack.

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Think about that for a second. Considering the fact that a 10% conversion rate is high for even the most targeted online ads, how much would Marvel have to pay for a post-movie ad for it to be profitable for Moviepass to have paid for you to go to that movie? The numbers just don't make sense when you are paying $9 each time people use the app.

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The ads most likely will not be for movies, but rather for goods/services targeted at people that attend certain movies.

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Understood. Now think about how much do you need to charge for those ads to cover the cost of people actually using the service? The math doesn't work. Maybe if there were a mesothelioma movie, you'd be able to charge the kind of money you'd need to charge but just watching a random superhero movie doesn't make an advertiser jump to pay thousand dollar CPMs.

Movie selection sucks right now