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by bombcar 49 days ago
The idea was they'd bootstrap it by giving you a credit card that could buy one ticket (which is all it was, a weird debit/credit card with a $15-20 authorization limit and a limited number of merchants accepted) - and then get the theaters onboard so that the theaters would be paying for it.

So (in theory) it's a "win win" if they get everyone onboard - the theater gets to sell popcorn, the movie studio gets a buck or two instead of nothing, and movie pass collects the subscription.

However, it needs them all to agree that the $15 ticket for "the empty theater" is really only worth $1 - which would go to the movie studio. That part never happened.
1 comments
WorldMaker 48 days ago
AMC was one of the theater chains that did figure it out, but was also smart enough to realize that they didn't need the middle man and had a large enough chain to leverage. AMC A-List still exists. (Up to 4 movies per week at $23-35/month.)
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tracker1 48 days ago
This is the one I was thinking of... I didn't know of a separate "MoviePass" than what AMC and a few other theaters did that was similar.
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WorldMaker 48 days ago
Yeah, "MoviePass" was its own SV startup that tried to be the generic version of this pass and apply to "all" theaters. It burnt through a bunch of VC funds just to fail and it shouldn't have been a huge surprise that big chains like AMC decided to do their own similar passes on their own without a middleman.
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listenallyall 48 days ago
I'd say it is indeed a huge surprise that a struggling company refused to do business with another entity which was trying to purchase tens of millions of dollars of its product.
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listenallyall 48 days ago
> "smart enough"

AMC is the dumbest company (or more specifically, its CEO Adam Aron is the dumbest executive). MoviePass came in out of nowhere and became the largest purchaser of movie tickets... millions every week. And AMC actively fought against them, refused to even let them buy tickets at full price, and led the charge to drive them out of business. For what alternative? Mostly, nothing but empty seats.

AMC's stock price is $1.59 as I write this vs $50-70 while MoviePass was peaking around 2018. AMC had to do a 10-to-1 reverse stock split to avoid being delisted, they may need to do another one. They even got a brief "meme stock" spike over $250 and managed to do absolutely nothing productive (except pay the CEO more) with this new capital access.

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