posted 03-19-2019 11:36 PM                       

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MoviePass brings back its unlimited movie plan, with a limited time price of $9.95

MoviePass is bringing back a version of the plan that made it so popular in the first place — a subscription where you pay a monthly fee and get an unlimited number of 2D movie tickets.

MoviePass Uncapped will have a regular price of $19.95 per month, but the company is offering cheaper deals for what it says is a limited time. If you’re willing to pay for a full year (via ACH payment), it will cost the same as that original unlimited plan, namely $9.95 per month. If you don’t want to make a full-year commitment, it will cost $14.95 per month.

Now, you may be thinking that this kind of deal is exactly what got MoviePass into so much trouble last year, to the point where it nearly ran out of money and began announcing new pricing plans and restrictions on a seemingly constant basis.

However, the company’s announcement today includes multiple references to its ability to “combat violations” of MoviePass’ terms of use. And those terms do say that “MoviePass has the right to limit the selection of movies and/or the times of available movies should your individual use adversely impact MoviePass’s system-wide capacity or the availability of the Service for other subscribers.”

So if you’re a heavy MoviePass user, the plan may not be truly unlimited.

In addition, you’ll only be able to reserve tickets three hours before showtime, and you’ll need to check in to the theater between 10 and 30 minutes before the movie starts.

This new plan replaces the ones announced in December. If you’ve already signed up, you can stick to those subscriptions, but new users won’t have that option.

In a statement, Ted Farnsworth, CEO of MoviePass parent company Helios and Matheson Analytics, said:

We are – and have been – listening to our subscribers every day, and we understand that an uncapped subscription plan at the $9.95 price point is the most appealing option to our subscribers. While we’ve had to modify our service a number of times in order to continue delivering a movie-going experience to our subscribers, with this new offering we are doing everything we can to bring people a version of the service that originally won their hearts.

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posted 03-20-2019 12:06 AM                    

quote: Techcrunch article

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In addition, you’ll only be able to reserve tickets three hours before showtime, and you’ll need to check in to the theater between 10 and 30 minutes before the movie starts.

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posted 03-22-2019 12:41 PM                       

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MoviePass Co-Founder's New Startup Must Be Stopped
Melanie Ehrenkranz

The co-founder of MoviePass wants to make going to the movies more affordable, so long as you’re comfortable submitting to mandatory ad watching and creepy surveillance tech. PreShow, an invitation-only service launched by Stacy Spikes, uses facial recognition software to make sure you are actively tuning into a hellacious amount of ads. In return for this indentured consumerism, you get a free movie ticket.

According to the PreShow Kickstarter, which launched on Thursday, the company uses its “proprietary facial identification software” to ensure you actually watch the 15 to 20 minutes of branded content on your device. “The motion detector automatically pauses playback if you have to step away,” according to the project page. “You can resume watching anytime at your leisure.”

It’s not until you’ve watched the entire ad that you’ll be credited your free movie ticket. The Kickstarter page states that privacy is a “top concern” for the company, and that while no users are recorded and no “personally identifiable data is shared,” they can share aggregated and anonymized data to their partners. So your uniquely personal habits may, as they claim, remain private, but the accumulated data still offers brands insight into the behavior of certain groups of people. That’s valuable and exploitable information for a company that profits exactly from that.

“Well, why can’t you have an ad-supported version that will allow you to go to movies for free?” Spikes told TechCrunch.

It’s possible that PreShow is mostly a B2B play to license their watch-the-fucking-ad technology to third parties. In the world of movie business model “disruption,” such licensing is common. Both MoviePass and competitor Sinemia have attempted to do this with their ticket-subscription tech.

Of course, as we’ve increasingly come to understand, “free” is a loaded word when it comes to reaping the benefits in the digital age—a free service oftentimes means sacrificing your time and your privacy. In PreShow’s case, it dangles the promise of a “free” movie-going experience for what’s a stone’s throw from clamping your eyes open to make sure you consume the necessary content.

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posted 04-18-2019 05:31 PM                       

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MoviePass users apparently hit the exits en masse after it scaled back the number of movies users could see each month: The flailing cinema-subscription provider has seen its subscriber rolls plunge from a peak of more than 3 million to just 225,000 in under a year, according to a new report.

The numbers were reported by Business Insider, which cited “internal data” it had obtained. Asked for comment, a MoviePass spokeswoman declined to confirm the subscriber figure.

In June 2018, MoviePass claimed it had signed up more than 3 million subscribers for its $9.95 monthly plan, which let customers see one movie every single day. But that proved unsustainable, and MoviePass was forced to change that to a three-movies-per-month plan. In August 2018, MoviePass Inc. began to convert subscribers on annual subscription plans to the three-movies-per-month subscription plan, by giving annual subscribers the option to either cancel or refund their annual subscription or continue on the new three-movies-per-month subscription plan.

Evidently, over 90% of MoviePass’ previous subscribers didn’t care to continue paying for the service given the dramatically scaled-backed terms.

Last month, MoviePass introduced a refashioned “unlimited” plan, dubbed Uncapped, priced at $14.95 per month (or $119.4 per year), to again allow customers to see one movie daily. But it comes with big caveats, described by MoviePass like this: “Your movie choices may be restricted due to excessive individual usage which negatively impacts system-wide capacity.” According to the BI report, MoviePass has signed up only about 13,000 new subscribers Uncapped launched in mid-March.

As of March 21, 2019, Helios & Matheson Analytics (MoviePass’ parent company) said it had cash on hand of about $2.8 million and approximately $13.1 million on deposit with its merchant and fulfillment processors related to subscription revenues.

Last month, Helios and Matheson said it raised a $6 million new round of financing from “certain institutional investors,” which closed March 25. The company said it would use the $5.56 million net proceeds (after placement-agent fees) “to accelerate MoviePass’ product development, fine tune its subscription technology, and increase MoviePass Films’ investment in new films.”

Helios & Matheson last filed financial results for the September 2018 quarter. Last month, it restated results for the first nine months of 2018 — saying it had a net loss of $256.4 million (versus $246.9 million previously) and an operating loss of $327.4 million (versus $320 million before). The company’s revenue for the first three quarters of 2018 was restated as $198.3 million (compared with $204.9 million)

HMNY said those misstatements were the result of “the erroneous recognition of up to approximately $5.9 million of revenue from certain MoviePass subscriptions that were in a suspended state due to changes made to the MoviePass subscription service that had not yet been consented to by the applicable subscribers.” The company also included $700,000 in revenue from the sale of subscriptions by Costco, but those subscriptions were refunded and MoviePass didn’t factor that into its earnings.

Last fall, the New York Attorney General opened a securities-fraud probe into whether Helios and Matheson misled investors. Among other legal woes, MoviePass also is the target of a class-action lawsuit by subscribers claiming the the change in the “unlimited” plan was a deceptive “bait-and-switch” tactic.

Separately, MoviePass is suing rival Sinemia, alleging patent infringement. A judge earlier this month allowed MoviePass’ lawsuit to proceed.

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posted 04-21-2019 10:40 AM                    

quote: Frank Cox

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If it's like other facial recognition stuff you can probably get around it by propping a photo of someone in front of the camera and then coming back in twenty minutes.

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posted 04-29-2019 04:57 PM                    

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As moviegoers rush to the theaters in record numbers to find out which Marvel heroes will be resurrected from the dead in "Avengers: Endgame," the movie subscription service Sinemia announced that it's game over for the company's U.S. operations – effective immediately.

The MoviePass competitor announced on its website Thursday that it's calling it quits just as the latest Avengers movie began breaking box office records on its first day.

"Today, with a heavy heart, we’re announcing that Sinemia is closing its doors and ending operations in the US," a notice on the company's website reads. "We want to sincerely thank our customers that believed in us and helped us along the way."
Why the sudden shutdown?

Sinemia, which billed itself as a sustainable cinema subscription service, cited “unexpected legal proceedings” and a lack of “funds required to continue operations.”

The movie-subscription company has been beleaguered by lawsuits in the past year, including a class-action suit from customers saying they were the victims of a “bait-and-switch” scheme involving hidden processing fees.

Sinemia also faces a lawsuit from rival MoviePass, which accused the Turkish company of stealing patented features in its app.

"We are all witnessing that the future of moviegoing is evolving through movie ticket subscriptions," Sinemia said in a statement on its website.

"However, we didn’t see a path to sustainability as an independent movie ticket subscription service in the face of competition from movie theaters as they build their own subscriptions."
What are my other options?

As movie lovers look for thrifty ways to save money on cinema tickets, theater chains have smelled blood in the water, devising their own cash-saving subscription plans to please customers.

Cinemark Movie Club, for instance, costs $8.99 per month and provides 20 percent off concessions, rollover and companion tickets, reserved seating and no online fees.

AMC continues to gain traction with its multiplex subscription service AMC Stubs A-List, which gives film lovers a way to see three screenings a week for roughly $20 a month.

Meanwhile, MoviePass has experimented with a range of subscription schemes in the past year. Most recently it rolled out an “uncapped” movie-per-day plan that costs $9.95 a month if you pay for 12 months upfront.
Ok, so can I get my money back?

Sinemia's announcement does not say whether customers who paid for yearly plans up front would get partial refunds.

However, a Reddit thread says some users who paid annual memberships are receiving pro-rated refunds from Chase.

Still, you may not get your money back directly from Sinemia for the time being, seeing as though the company has just filed for bankruptcy in Delaware. In the filing, Sinemia listed $1.2 million in assets and $158,000 in liabilities (as well as the pending cases).

USA TODAY reached out to the company to get more information about refunds. This story will be updated accordingly.
What's next for Sinemia?

An earlier report by Bloomberg suggested that shutting down the service allows Sinemia to focus their business on helping existing theater chains build subscription plans.

For now, Sinemia still operates in Canada, Australia and the U.K. It’s not immediately clear what the company's plans are for those other countries.

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