MoviePass says it is shutting down and ending service for all subscribers on Saturday, September 14
As of Saturday September 14, 2019, MoviePass has moviepassed on. Sam Rutherford / Gizmodo : It's Curtains on the MoviePass Grift Brittany A. Roston / SlashGear : MoviePass will officially shut down on September 14 Shelby Brown / CNET : MoviePass is shutting down Sept. 14 Anousha Sakoui / Bloomberg : MoviePass Owners Put Shuttered Service Up for Sale, Ending Drama Orion Rummler / Axios : MoviePass service to end September 14 Matt Kim / IGN : RIP Movie Pass: September Shut Down Date Announced Igor Bonifacic / Engadget : MoviePass is shutting down on September 14th Greg Kumparak / TechCrunch : MoviePass will shut down on September 14th Emily Price / Digital Trends : MoviePass will officially shut down its movie subscription service Michael Potuck / 9to5Mac : MoviePass closing shop after months of making service worse, but still seeking funding Petrana Radulovic / Polygon : MoviePass is shutting down on Sept. 14 Caroline Haskins / VICE : MoviePass Is Shutting Down on September 14 Msmash / Slashdot : MoviePass Will Shut Down For Good on September 14 Tweets: Jeffrey Overstreet / @overstweet : I feel sad about this. Whenever something like Napster pioneers a new idea against the odds, then gets crushed, while bigger companies steal its idea and have the resources to make it work, it's a loss for dreamers. R.I.P. Moviepass. You had a great dream. https://www.theverge.com/... Adam Sigel / @adamsigel : MoviePass was so beloved and failed so spectacularly I'm kind of surprised I never worked there https://twitter.com/... Shea it Aint So / @aehsaehsaehs : 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/... Bill Gurley / @bgurley : Mr. @trengriffin you were right all along. https://twitter.com/... M.G. Siegler / @mgsiegler : “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/... @asiachloebrown : They lasted like 5 years longer than I expected. https://twitter.com/... Karl Bode / @karlbode : 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/... Matt Weinberger / @gamoid : 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/... Steve Cheney / @stevecheney : 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/... Carrie Raisler / @tvanddinners : For one glorious Oscar season, I saw ALL the movies. You burned bright and fast, RIP. https://twitter.com/... Alex Kirshner / @alex_kirshner : 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/... Brendon Bigley / @brendonbigley : 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/... David Pierce / @pierce : 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/... Sabreena Merchant / @sabreenajm : 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/... Rocco Botte / @rocco_botte : 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/... Tasha Robinson / @tasharobinson : 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.com/... Tren Griffin / @trengriffin : 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/... Murat / @muratkberme : 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 🤷🏻♂ ️ https://twitter.com/... Todd Saunders / @toddsaunders : Netflix should make this into a movie 😂 https://twitter.com/... Eric Scott Johnson / @heyheyesj : 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! Steve Berman / @stevengberman : This was the slowest breaking story in entertainment since OJ's slow ride. https://twitter.com/... @5minutemovieguy : 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/... @minovskyarticle : I thought this was a headline from last year. https://twitter.com/... Mike Dudas / @mdudas : Stunner. Literally no one I spoke with saw this coming. https://www.cnbc.com/... @hunterwalk : MoviePast https://twitter.com/... Terry Kanu / @terrykanu : only took a thousand years https://twitter.com/... Rebecca Fishbein / @bfishbfish : 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/... Josh Hendrickson / @canterrain : 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/... Harry McCracken / @harrymccracken : I forgot that MoviePass bought Moviefone, and hope it survives even though I haven't used it in this century. https://twitter.com/... @recode : 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/... Jane Manchun Wong / @wongmjane : We should create a service like MoviePass but online only, where subscribers can watch more than 3 movies per month https://twitter.com/... Harry McCracken / @harrymccracken : I only remember writing about MoviePass once, in 2013. They'd already been around for awhile then. http://techland.time.com/... Harry McCracken / @harrymccracken : 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/... Kif / @kifleswing : The Moviepass security certs expired 27 days ago pic.twitter.com/VRfBzrfKcm Louis Gray / @louisgray : @CaseyNewton I saw many bad movies on MoviePass' dime, which I'd never have seen without the service. Casey Newton / @caseynewton : 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 : 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/... Casey Newton / @caseynewton : Good Riddance (Time Of Your Life).mp3 https://twitter.com/... Peter Kafka / @pkafka : Still, we got Gotti. https://twitter.com/... Crissy / @crissymilazzo : devastated to hear that something everyone thought happened six months ago is happening right now https://twitter.com/... Ben Collins / @oneunderscore__ : This was a thrilling six weeks that felt like a nonstop bank heist. Thank you, weird VC money pit. https://twitter.com/... Charlie Warzel / @cwarzel : rip late 2010s https://twitter.com/... @cnbcnow : 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/... Alison Herman / @aherman2006 : RIP TO A LEGEND https://twitter.com/... Tom Gara / @tomgara : Weird, seems like an obvious WeWork acquisition https://twitter.com/... Alex Griswold / @hashtaggriswold : I can't believe the plan to sell forty dollars a month for ten dollars didn't work out https://twitter.com/... See also Mediagazer
Context & Ripple Effects
The end was long telegraphed. MoviePass scaled explosively after its $89.95 one-year plan in November 2017 — from roughly 150K users to 1M paying subscribers within months — but the unit economics never closed: by mid-2018 an [[a:931903|SEC filing showed it had run out of money, caused a service outage, and needed a $6M+ short-term loan]], and the flagship $10/month unlimited plan had already been pulled for new signups.
What changed today is finality: instead of another tier downgrade, the service is shutting off entirely for every subscriber on September 14, and per Bloomberg's Anousha Sakoui, the owners are simultaneously putting the shuttered service up for sale — an exit rather than a pivot.
First-order effects
- Every remaining subscriber loses access Saturday, September 14, ending the discounted-theater-ticket value proposition they signed up for.
- Helios and Matheson's ownership group shifts from operating a subscriber business to marketing a shut-down asset for sale, converting users and data into deal inventory.
Second-order effects
- Theater chains like AMC lose the subsidized ticket volume MoviePass funneled into auditoriums, while their own loyalty programs no longer compete against a below-cost rival for moviegoers' monthly spend.
- Adjacent subscription players such as ClassPass inherit a cautionary benchmark: investors now price 'unlimited' consumer subscriptions against MoviePass's documented cash exhaustion, tightening funding for similar models.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, the flat-rate all-you-can-consume subscription gives way to usage-priced alternatives — consistent with the reported plan to relaunch MoviePass as a credit-based marketplace paired with an ad platform using facial detection, monetizing attention rather than subsidizing tickets.
The trend: Consumer media subscriptions are repricing from flat-rate loss-leader plans toward per-use credits and ad-funded models, with MoviePass's collapse serving as the template case.