Moviepass, an American subscription-based movie ticketing service founded in 2011, is making an offer that sounds too good to be true. According to Business Insider, the company is offering its members the opportunity of watching any number of movies any time for $10 per month.
Considering an average movie ticket costs at least $9, the whole idea of paying just $10 for an entire month for any number of movies draws more attention on saving the theatre experience as opposed to focusing on money.
MoviePass was founded in 2011 by technology and entertainment entrepreneurs, Stacy Spikes and Hamet Watt. The company’s business model has faced a lot of resistance from major cinema chains since its launch, such as AMC Theatres and Landmark Theatres.
But bearing this new offer in mind, some restrictions do apply: it’s one movie per day max, and it doesn’t cover 3-D or IMAX. But ticket limits are gone, and it works at any theater that accepts debit cards.
CEO Mitch Lowe tells Wired:
“What we’re trying to do is remove as much friction as possible from going to the movies. We’re trying to do the same thing Netflix did for DVD rental and home rental, which is remove the barriers to experiment and try smaller films.”
According to Wired, with this offer, the only way MoviePass could benefit even after dramatically slashing the price of the tickets is getting one’s data. Incidentally, the company sold a majority stake of itself this week to Helios and Matheson Analytics, a big data company that sees big potential in the type of information it can take from MoviePass members.
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“We can get people into opening night seats for a movie that a studio cannot justify spending big bucks on mass media. By using our data and our relationship with the customer—and this isn’t meaningful unless we have millions of subscribers—but when we have millions of subscribers we can help studios turn a movie that is a hit or a miss into a hit. We can get the right people into the theater,” Lowe adds.
MoviePass claims it works at 91 percent of theaters in the country, including chains such as Regal and AMC. Reddit user xur17 made a handy website where one can enter the ZIP code to see what theaters close by accept MoviePass. In addition, one can download the MoviePass app.
Pic: MoviePass blog