MoviePass Sets Late Summer Relaunch With Tiered Prices — and a Waitlist
MoviePass, the beleaguered moviegoing subscription service that collapsed in spectacular fashion, is returning at the end of the summer.
The subsidized ticketing subscription service will relaunch in beta form on Labor Day, though potential users will have to first join a waitlist. Starting on Thursday at 9 a.m. ET, MoviePass will allow customers to sign up on its website for a standby list, which will be open for five days. Anyone who makes the cut will be notified on Sept. 5.
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MoviePass co-founder Stacy Spikes announced in November 2021 that he bought the company back after its parent company Helios and Matheson Analytics went bankrupt. In a press conference last February touting the return of MoviePass, Spikes gave few details other than teasing a monthly credit system — a la the fitness-based ClassPass — to watch movies on the big screen.
As first reported by Business Insider, prices will vary based on the customer’s ZIP code — and general tiers will be $10, $20 or $30 a month. Each option will give the user a number of credits each month. However, MoviePass has not specified the amount of credits that come with each plan, nor the number of credits required to reserve a movie ticket.
There are plenty more unanswered questions. Will first-run movies be included? (In the final days of MoviePass 1.0, users weren’t permitted to get tickets to new blockbusters.) And which theaters will be participating? MoviePass says it has partnered with 25% of movie theaters in the U.S., but it’s unclear if that includes major chains like AMC Theatres or Regal Cinemas.
“More details will be shared later,” a spokesperson for MoviePass told Variety.
The company did, however, reveal the new card will be black. The now-defunct piece of plastic that used to get film buffs at least one movie ticket per day was red.
It’s been a bumpy road, one with high highs and low lows, for MoviePass. The company shot to notoriety in 2017 by offering customers in any city the option to see one movie each day for $9.99 a month. The too-good-to-be-sustainable price point proved to be economically ruinous, and eventually in early 2020, Helios and Matheson Analytics, which owned MoviePass, filed for bankruptcy after running out of cash.
Still, MoviePass’s idea to offer cinephiles the option to watch an endless number of movies on the big screen proved to be something of a trailblazer. In the wake of MoviePass’s initial demise, theater chains like AMC Theatres, Regal and Cinemark launched their own rival subscription plans.
MoviePass, in its earlier iteration, will eventually be memorialized with a documentary series, executive produced by Mark Wahlberg, chronicling the rise and fall of the ill-fated company.
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