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by dbatten 2964 days ago
Wasn't there some article a while back about how MoviePass was trying to have a big enough market-share in terms of movie-goers (read: popcorn and soda revenue for theaters) to be able to start pushing theaters around? In other words, they could say to theater companies "hey, maybe you should think about giving us tickets at a discount so you don't lose out on that sweet sweet concession money." Or maybe even play one theater brand off against another?

I wonder if theaters have figured this is a waiting game and they can just let MoviePass die and go back to business as usual...

5 comments

They explicitly tried that with AMC, by denying customer access to the top ten AMC theaters in the US to prove that Moviepass has market pull.

I found out in the lobby of the AMC, bought my own damn ticket, and mulled over cancelling Moviepass for two weeks. AMC didn't blink, though, so those theaters were re-enabled right before I was about to switch to Sinemia.

Yes. From http://deadline.com/2018/01/moviepass-lack-of-amc-theatres-c... :

> On Thursday, MoviePass shaved 10 of the busiest AMC locations off its app in an effort to take a hard position against the nation’s largest movie theater chain. MoviePass is seeking a $3 cut on AMC tickets that it covers, plus 20% of concessions given the foot traffic it sends to AMC (a total estimated at about $2 million a week, per MoviePass insiders).

I believe further analysis showed that the "$2 million a week" was ridiculously inflated.

That's addressed toward the end of the article - basically the AMC CEO calling the pricing Moviepass wanted 'ridiculous', and saying it's not sustainable.
He's not wrong
I thought that was blatantly obvious from the very start? Their entire business model is to gain enough subscribers, that they can use to leverage theaters.
Cinemark came out with their own subscription service. Not the same type of deal as MoviePass but still, it made me decide to go with theirs over MoviePass. Sure it means I'm locked in to Cinemark only if I want to make use of it but I know my benefits of the sub won't change month to month.