MoviePass, the struggling movie subscription service, will limit customers to three movies per month. "Additionally, the new plan addresses past misuses which imposed undue costs on the system, including ticket scalping, unauthorized card usage and other activities, which in the past necessitated the use of certain remedial measures that have sometimes been inconvenient for our subscribers".
With all of these issues percolating in the background, MoviePass has chose to change its tactics and will not raise its monthly subscription price after all.
According to MoviePass, only 15 percent of its more than 3 million subscribers see more than four movies per month.
MoviePass made headlines last month when the app suffered an outage because its parent company couldn't afford to pay for customers' tickets. As a result, the company expects the new subscription model won't affect 85 percent of its customers.
For example, if a MoviePass user wants to see the "Aquaman" movie this winter they should be able to see it at MoviePass-compliant theaters on opening weekend, with none of the issues that plagued the service during the opening of the latest "Mission: Impossible" film. Peak pricing and ticket verification (where subscribers had to take a picture of their ticket stub) have been suspended, while subscribers can once again see first-run major studio films.
As expected, MoviePass has been receiving a lot of outrage from its existing subscribers for this move as well. Now, in a bid to pacify its users and stop all that criticism, MoviePass today announced that it will not be raising its subscription price to $14.95/month as it had previously announced.
The company raised $5 million last week (and promised to pay the lender back $6 million) in an extremely short term loan that can be called in at anytime by the hedge fund that lend MoviePass the cash. In an interview with the WSJ, CEO Mitch Lowe confirmed that the price will remain at $9.95 per month, and that there will be no two week moratorium on new releases.