MoviePass, the subscription service for new movies that is helmed by early Netflix executive Mitch Lowe, will bring its monthly subscription fee down to $10 but in exchange for the privacy of its customers.
MoviePass has offered a Netflix-style service for years, though pricing and accessibility models have been in flux. The range of the monthly subscription fee typically ranged from $30 to $50, though, so a reduction to $10 per month is a massive change.
MoviePass To Drive Down Monthly Fee To $10
Movie theaters have been struggling to draw in customers, pushing Lowe to make the extreme proposal of allowing MoviePass subscribers to watch a movie daily for a whole month for the price of a single ticket.
Upon paying the subscription fee, customers will be able to watch a movie at any theater in the United States that accepts debit cards. MoviePass will then pay the theaters the full price of teach ticket. IMAX and 3D screenings are not included in the plan.
The $10-per-month MoviePass plan has already attracted a flood of new customers, with the massive interest actually crashing the subscription service's website.
MoviePass For $10: What's The Catch?
Anybody who takes a look at the plan knows that MoviePass will not be making a profit off the $10 subscription fees, as that is only enough to cover a single viewing. What's the real deal behind the offer?
To subsidize the screenings of its subscribers, MoviePass sold a majority stake to Helios and Matheson Analytics, a small publicly traded data firm based in New York. The mission is to attract a massive customer base and then sell user data that can be collected from the subscribers to the highest bidders.
The question, therefore, is whether the data that MoviePass can collect from moviegoers is valuable enough to keep the $10 monthly plan going. It is currently unclear what specific data points will be collected and if the data will be anonymized once sold. However, for movie enthusiasts, giving up privacy to enjoy a MoviePass subscription might be a small price to pay, especially since practically all online services and electronic devices already do the same thing.
AMC Threatens To Sue MoviePass
In 2014, MoviePass and AMC Theatres teamed up to offer a $35 plan to watch any movie in a standard format once daily and a $45 plan to watch any movie in any format, including IMAX and 3D, once daily.
It would now seem that the partnership is in peril, as AMC has threatened to launch legal action against MoviePass, as the $10 monthly plan "is not in the best interest of moviegoers, movie theatres and movie studios."
AMC questioned the long-term viability of MoviePass's model and is looking to find a way to prevent the program to be used at its locations.
