Credit:@romeoz13
Movie Pass has faced many malfunctions to the app and drawbacks of certain service features. As a result, the business model has drastically changed since the announcement of the price drop in August 2017. Below is a detailed timeline of the malfunctions and restrictions that were faced by the MoviePass service following the release of regulatory filings, revealing the company facing more than $150 million cash deficit, which led up to the most recent change in mid-August 2018 of decreasing the number of movie showings for subscribers.
In mid-April, the company went from offering a movie-a-day to four movies a month. After receiving backlash, the company returned to the original model. However, months following this, there were drawbacks, such as surge pricing and outages.
Also, the MoviePass service was not working July 28 due to the parent company temporarily running out of money. As a result, the company had to borrow money due to a high cash deficit. Helios and Matheson, the parent company, borrowed $6.2 million, with $5 million cash dedicated to assisting with Movie Pass, according to Variety. The outage was solved the next day; however, screenings of certain movies were still not available for subscribers. The screening restrictions were mainly for movies that are deemed popular, which are coming out in more than 1,000 screenings, with these movies not being available on their opening weekends or even within two weekends of its release.
“We must reduce availability for big new-release titles, such as “Mission: Impossible – Fallout” and other popular new releases, at least for a while as we adjust the business model. We are working on making this clearer in the app, so you know which titles are available,” said Mitch Lowe in an email sent out to subscribers after the service outage in July, according to the Hollywood Reporter.
That was not the only change to the service following the outage. In the same email, Lowe stated that “showtimes that are offered through our service will vary from day to day, and every showtime may not be available.”
More malfunctions evolved with the services provided by Movie Pass, such as glitches and bugs in the app, which is used to purchase the tickets and check into the theaters.
MoviePass also announced that they would raise the monthly fee from $9.95 to $14.95. However, after receiving more backlash, the company settled on keeping the price at $9.95.
The most recent change to the service was decreasing the number of movies that subscribers can see a month from up to 30 a month to only three movies a month. This change was announced in early August and implemented August 15. This change was not intended to effect the annual subscribers of the one-movie-a-day deal until their subscription renewal. However, on August 24, even these annual subscribers were subject to only being able to see three movies a month. An email was sent out, informing annual subscription holders and there only other option is to cancel the subscription to get refunded for remaining funds if unhappy with the change, according to Hollywood Reporter.
