MoviePass says it is shutting down and ending service for all subscribers on Saturday, September 14

KEY POINTS — The company informed subscribers that it was ending the service because its “efforts to recapitalize MoviePass have not been successful to date.”

CNBC 2019-09-14 Annie Palmer

Context & Ripple Effects

MoviePass's collapse is the endgame of a two-year burn: the one-year $89.95 subscription plan and cheaper tiers drove paying users from roughly 150K to 1M in two months, but the all-you-can-watch economics never covered ticket costs.

By mid-2018 the model broke — the company had already retreated from the unlimited plan, and an SEC filing revealed it ran out of money and couldn't cover its bills during a service outage. Today's shutdown notice, attributed to failed recapitalization efforts, is the final step of that unwind.

First-order effects

All subscribers lose service on Saturday, September 14, ending their subscriptions with no successor product offered by the company.
The recapitalization effort MoviePass cited has failed, leaving the current entity without funding to continue operations.

Second-order effects

Theaters lose the traffic spike the discount subscription brought, while rival movie-subscription services inherit subscribers looking for a replacement — pricing pressure shifts toward sustainable per-month caps rather than daily unlimited plans.
Studios and exhibitors gain evidence that below-cost consumer pricing cannot anchor a subscription business, pushing future deals toward revenue-sharing structures with exhibitors instead.

Third-order effects

If the pattern holds, movie subscription models consolidate around operator-backed or credit-based structures — a path the corpus already foreshadows in the planned relaunch as a credit-based marketplace.
Consumer subscription businesses face a structural lesson: user counts built on underpriced plans (1M users within months) are not durable without unit economics, making capital efficiency the gating factor for growth-stage subscription startups.

The trend: Flat-rate unlimited subscription models in entertainment are giving way to capped or credit-based structures after MoviePass's growth-at-any-cost playbook ended in shutdown.

Discussion

@aehsaehsaehs Shea it Aint So on x
RIP to the company that took millions in VC and then blew it on letting people see movies for free and producing the film Gotti https://twitter.com/...
@mgsiegler M.G. Siegler on x
“They kept insisting their plan would work. They just needed to keep growing. And since they were, they just needed more time. Things were going great! We would all see in the end! [Narrator: we would not.]” Narrator: we did not. 🎟💸🔥 https://500ish.com/...
@tvanddinners Carrie Raisler on x
For one glorious Oscar season, I saw ALL the movies. You burned bright and fast, RIP. https://twitter.com/...
@trengriffin Tren Griffin on x
1/ MoviePass was the subject of one of my blog posts in December 2017 because it was the most available way to teach people how to analyze a business, including understanding unit economics, premature scaling, wholesale transfer pricing and value chains. https://www.theverge.com/…
@gamoid Matt Weinberger on x
MoviePass! I'll always remember the six great months I got out of you, and then the six terrible ones after unit economics finally caught up with you. https://www.cnbc.com/...
@asiachloebrown @asiachloebrown on x
They lasted like 5 years longer than I expected. https://twitter.com/...
@alex_kirshner Alex Kirshner on x
Silicon Valley will probably end the world one day, but seriously: Thank you to the VC geniuses who bought my movie tickets for me throughout summer 2018. Your gift was appreciated more than you know https://twitter.com/...
@5minutemovieguy @5minutemovieguy on x
It was great while it lasted. I got a good year out of it before it went downhill. Thanks to MoviePass we now have things like AMC A-List and Regal Unlimited. Rest In Peace, sweet prince! https://twitter.com/...
@toddsaunders Todd Saunders on x
Netflix should make this into a movie 😂 https://twitter.com/...
@rocco_botte Rocco Botte on x
This thing was kind of bizarre to me- while everyone was raging about how bad it was, I had ZERO problems with it and saw everything I wanted. No issues. Then the 4th of July hit, the thing stopped working, and credit cards got stolen. What a finale. https://twitter.com/...
@minovskyarticle @minovskyarticle on x
I thought this was a headline from last year. https://twitter.com/...
@stevengberman Steve Berman on x
This was the slowest breaking story in entertainment since OJ's slow ride. https://twitter.com/...
@brendonbigley Brendon Bigley on x
moviepass was a “too good to be true” deal from day one... it also convinced every major movie theater chain to radically change their business model in an attempt to compete. so i guess i'm glad it existed, even though i dunked on it pretty much daily??? https://twitter.com/...
@pierce David Pierce on x
I got a MoviePass card, it didn't work, I spent three months trying to get through to customer service and gave up. Basically I gave Moviepass a free $90. Shocking that with such an airtight business model it couldn't stay alive https://www.theverge.com/...
@muratkberme Murat on x
No offense to those that invested but in my deal memo for AOL Ventures I was explicitly asked to remove my “cons”... NO INFORMATIONAL ASYMETRY means that it was never the Netflix for movie goers... everyone knows how much [n] tickets cost verses the monthly subscription 🤷🏻‍♂ ️ ht…
@karlbode Karl Bode on x
I still laugh when I think about how the CEO of this dumpster fire arbitrarily started changing user passwords so they couldn't use the service as advertised. https://twitter.com/...
@sabreenajm Sabreena Merchant on x
Had a great 10 months of MoviePass from Oct 2017 to August 2018 and it made me love movies again. I'm so very grateful for this stupid, nonsensical service that was doomed from the start. https://twitter.com/...
@heyheyesj Eric Scott Johnson on x
MoviePass was always doomed and their customer service treated me like crap once, but it's probably the reason AMC created Stubs A-List, which is a great value for me and has encouraged me to take a chance on more movies that I wound up enjoying. So ... thanks, MoviePass!
@tasharobinson Tasha Robinson on x
By the end, a Moviepass membership would only let you see one movie per year, and only in a single theater, which was located in a back alley behind a bowling alley in Tuscon. But by God, they were gonna figure out how to monetize that model just any old day now. https://twitter.…
@bgurley Bill Gurley on x
Mr. @trengriffin you were right all along. https://twitter.com/...
@stevecheney Steve Cheney on x
Startup idea: MoviePass, but not for movies, for food delivery, and only if you live in SF and are not employed at a startup that's part of the free lunch ban, and it's not unlimited, but like breadsticks at Olive Garden, unlimited only when profitable. https://twitter.com/...
@mdudas Mike Dudas on x
Stunner. Literally no one I spoke with saw this coming. https://www.cnbc.com/...
@hunterwalk @hunterwalk on x
MoviePast https://twitter.com/...
@terrykanu Terry Kanu on x
only took a thousand years https://twitter.com/...
@bfishbfish Rebecca Fishbein on x
MoviePass has had 1000 eulogies already, but I will always be grateful it came into existence right around the same time I got laid off & let me see dozens of movies when I had the time but not the cash. RIP, friend. https://www.cnbc.com/...
@canterrain Josh Hendrickson on x
MoviePass is shutting down with one day's notice. Somehow giving their (probably few) loyal customers one last gut punch on the way out seems pretty in character. https://twitter.com/...
@harrymccracken Harry McCracken on x
I forgot that MoviePass bought Moviefone, and hope it survives even though I haven't used it in this century. https://twitter.com/...
@recode @recode on x
MoviePass is shutting down tomorrow: https://www.theverge.com/... Listen to @pkafka's interview with @MoviePass CEO Mitch Lowe on Recode Media: https://www.vox.com/...
@wongmjane Jane Manchun Wong on x
We should create a service like MoviePass but online only, where subscribers can watch more than 3 movies per month https://twitter.com/...
@harrymccracken Harry McCracken on x
I only remember writing about MoviePass once, in 2013. They'd already been around for awhile then. http://techland.time.com/...
@harrymccracken Harry McCracken on x
The most tragic, unexpected news since the demise of Flooz. (Does it count as a victory that it existed as long as it did?) https://www.cnbc.com/...
@kifleswing Kif on x
The Moviepass security certs expired 27 days ago pic.twitter.com/VRfBzrfKcm
@louisgray Louis Gray on x
@CaseyNewton I saw many bad movies on MoviePass' dime, which I'd never have seen without the service.
@caseynewton Casey Newton on x
It's easy (and fine!) to laugh about MoviePass. But it was also, however briefly, the best thing to happen to moviegoing in the past 20 years
@rachel_shorey Rachel Shorey on x
I'm sad about what this means for my planned startup PassPass which gets you MoviePass, GymPass, ClassPass, LastPass and a passport for one low monthly fee https://twitter.com/...
@caseynewton Casey Newton on x
Good Riddance (Time Of Your Life).mp3 https://twitter.com/...
@pkafka Peter Kafka on x
Still, we got Gotti. https://twitter.com/...
@crissymilazzo Crissy on x
devastated to hear that something everyone thought happened six months ago is happening right now https://twitter.com/...
@cwarzel Charlie Warzel on x
rip late 2010s https://twitter.com/...
@oneunderscore__ Ben Collins on x
This was a thrilling six weeks that felt like a nonstop bank heist. Thank you, weird VC money pit. https://twitter.com/...
@cnbcnow @cnbcnow on x
JUST IN: MoviePass parent company says it will be shutting down the service for all subscribers tomorrow; company “unable to predict if or when the MoviePass service will continue” in the future. http://cnbc.com/...
@tomgara Tom Gara on x
Weird, seems like an obvious WeWork acquisition https://twitter.com/...
@aherman2006 Alison Herman on x
RIP TO A LEGEND https://twitter.com/...
@hashtaggriswold Alex Griswold on x
I can't believe the plan to sell forty dollars a month for ten dollars didn't work out https://twitter.com/...

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