[michaelt]

In the UK, several cinema chains offer subscriptions where, by buying an annual subscription, you can see as many films as you like. The fee is equivalent to somewhere between 2 and 4 movies per month.

If you're visiting the cinema very regularly, this saves money.

They can do this because they own the theatre, so when a subscription is used, it only costs them the _opportunity_ cost of one seat - which is very little, unless the showing is sold out, and they still make money on snacks. As MoviePass doesn't own the theatres, they pay the _retail_ price for every ticket a subscriber uses.

[kbutler]

1) theaters pay a sliding percentage of the ticket to the distributor, as high as 90% in the first week(s) a film is out, dropping the longer the film has been in theaters. This means (unless the chain is cheating the distributor, which admittedly has happened for brief periods) that seat is a very real cost to the theater.

2) with reserved seating, I'm much less likely to buy a ticket if the showing is almost full, so those filled seats can reduce additional ticket sales.