[panarky]

> MoviePass was billed as using the gym membership model

This was never their business model. MP doesn't win if customers pay $9.95 but sometimes forget to go to the movies.

MP wins when they get revshare deals with theaters.

Naturally theaters don't want to share, so MP is buying negotiating leverage with free movie tickets.

MP is trying to get 20 million movie patrons hooked on an all-you-can-eat model so MP becomes the source of a large percentage of traffic. Then MP can threaten to shut off the tap if they don't get a cut.

Theater chains are betting that MP burns through their cash before they get big enough to make that threat.

[slg]

What you are describing was their hope for the future business model, but it never materialized for a variety of reasons. The biggest being they were trying to brute force their way into making themselves a middleman in an industry without generating any value in that industry. All the extra value that theaters saw was not created by increased demand from consumers, it was simply paid for by MoviePass's investors. Like you said, the theaters are just betting they can wait that out. Maybe MoviePass thought it could be a middleman similar to Netflix or Spotify, but neither of those companies had to pay full retail cost for everything a customer watched/listened to.

[mevile]

This sounds dysfunctional. Business partners hoping to be the one that benefits at the expense of their partner.

[guiambros]

Is it too different from Spotify? Very similar situation.

[iamben]

Similar to the whole iTunes / CDs thing, for sure.