[bananamogul]

Actually, there was the kernel of a sound business idea.

The plan was that as you went to movies, you probably also went out to eat at a nearby restaurant, maybe stopped and had a drink, took transit to get there, etc. If they could hoover up all of that location- and merchant-tagged data, they could build a valuable profile for marketing.

Also, they believed that after you subscribed and gorged yourself on tons of movies for a couple months, the novelty would wear off and you'd revert to a more typical couple movies a month.

So if they could break even or make a small profit on the subscription, the data is where all the gold would be.

The problem was that they did not have the technology to gather all this info, not to mention the privacy/regulatory restrictions around essentially tracking your every movement and spend through a phone app.

There were a lot of other sketchy things about the company as well. Wall Street Millennial (a wonderfully entertaining channel) did a video on them: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_4vmCKIXOyw