This is to say that I was never the person who MoviePass should have been going for, as I was never going to be a sustainable part of their business model-they should have gone for people like my parents. My parents like to go to the movies, and go far more than the average person does, but they don't go enough to really warrant a subscription-based service were it to cost, say $25 a month. They'd definitely turn a profit at the right time of year (Christmas, early Summer), but a company having a consistent membership with my parents would be able to make back that money in slower times of year, and coupled with partnerships with theater chains and studios, could become a profitable, sustainable business model.
MoviePass was doomed the day it decided it could become Amazon and operate on a loss or on a negligible profit margin aka the day of the "$10 a month for unlimited movies" deal. Without some sort of business plan in place (like a profitable parent company to keep the lights on until they figured out where the revenue could lie), they were never going to work. It's clear that with the company running out of money on Thursday (the original story was that the app stopped working because of "technical glitches," but it seems it simply ran out of cash, something that should make Sunday's "technical glitches" all the more damning) was the beginning of the end, and while it might be able to snap victory from the jaws of defeat, it's more likely that it's going to simply be MySpace and not Apple at this point.
The sad thing is-MoviePass was a great idea, and one that with a few tweaks could have been truly successful. It's clear in hindsight that the $10 a month was too cheap (frankly, it was clear to everyone at the time that it was too cheap), but let's pretend for a second that MoviePass had only charged $25 a month. That feels like a pretty good bet-people would have to see 2-3 movies a month (depending on local theater costs) to clear a profit, but I think it's low enough that people would go for it assuming that they'd go to more movies. The initial fun of seeing a lot of movies would wear off (HBO, Netflix, Hulu, sports, and just other activities would eventually become more attractive than trying to "get your money's worth" every month), and it'd be something you'd use maybe 1-2 times a month, not wanting to cancel because you'd know that you could "get your money's worth" if you "just had some time," but then never actually cancelling. In many ways it'd be like the gym membership you keep in your wallet because you want to be the sort of person that uses it regularly. Sure there'd be super users, but the MoviePass base would be the people whom you're getting a relatively consistent stream of profit from, leaner in peak movie times and stronger in the spring and late summer when big-ticket movies start to fade.
Instead of trying to change the plan after the fact to turn a profit, then, you could actually use this revenue stream to improve your business. Forget surge pricing and "no repeat viewings"-you'd be giving people things they wanted. The only good thing MoviePass did was e-Ticketing, particularly with the Landmark Theaters chain-they could sign on with more theater chains to make it easier to book your tickets in advance, perhaps offering a premium membership for people to do this (forgetting the fact that most movies, outside of prime opening weekend slots, rarely actually sell out, and so this is a luxury you don't particularly need on a consistent basis). You could invest in customer service (deeply lacking at MoviePass) or a better app experience. You could work with movie chains to push notifications for specific movies on specific days to get more people in theaters on off-nights/times. You could also gain money through advertising on the app (how they never thought of that as an option is BEYOND me considering we live in a world where we get advertising everywhere). The point is-this would be sustainable.
$10 a month was stupid. Consumers drove to it because it was basically a Black Friday TV sale all year round. The problem is Wal-Mart can't sell TV's for no profit year-round, which is why the best Black Friday deals only happen for 10 minutes rather than 365 days a year. For $10 a month even the most casual of moviegoer would put the company in the red; now the only hope for profit (other than some quixotic bid to sell data, which is foolish as the only data you're collecting is that people like saving money) is people who don't go to the movies...and they ain't signing up for MoviePass. You're letting the people like my parents, people who see maybe 15 movies a year, disappear from under you by making them unprofitable. You'll get lots of publicity and become a major player, but unless you have an unlimited amount of cash (if Jeff Bezos had bought MoviePass, we'd be having a different conversation here), this is simply a thought experience about how quickly you can crash.
A lot of people on Twitter and social media are cancelling their MoviePass. This isn't the worst idea-it's hard to imagine this weekend not being on repeat for the coming weeks until the inevitable "we're closing business" email, and the equally inevitable class-action lawsuits that are going to come for the company considering the repeated changes in membership rules & the app crashes. I'll probably stick around unless the e-Ticketing stops working; getting to use Landmark Theaters unlimited is worth $10 a month even if I'm going to have to also get AMC A-List if they haven't figured things out in the next few days. But don't say this was inevitable, as MoviePass could have succeeded. It was just a case of one idiotic Hail Mary thrown before the company had even had its first down that totally tanked the entire organization before it could even have the hopes of succeeding.
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