MoviePass. There’s a name with a lot of weight to it. It may not be positive weight, but it’s weight nonetheless. A couple of years ago, the company made a huge splash when it opened up a $9.95 a month plan that allowed customers to see pretty much a new movie every day of the month — so almost unlimited movies. It was a plan that resonated with consumers, leading to its 3 million subscribers.

But economics is a bitch, and for every customer that used their service, they lost money. In fact, MoviePass lost tens of millions of dollars a month, because let’s face it: purchasing tickets at asking price and giving it to customers for a low monthly fee doesn’t make basic sense. But still, Ted Farnsworth, the former head of Helios and Matheson Analytics, which bought MoviePass in 2017, thinks MoviePass could be salvaged, in spite of its shuttering last Friday.

“We made the company a household name in two years and we disrupted the industry,” Farnsworth told Variety. “We put hundreds of millions of dollars into the company, and I don’t want to just cut our losses. It’s something that we can reshape and rebuild. It will take time, but I think we can revitalize the whole brand.”

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Okay, that’s fair enough, I guess. But surely they couldn’t continue on with the $9.95 price point, right? That was the core problem before, right? Well, he certainly doesn’t think so.

“I don’t think the pricing was wrong,” he said. “We would have been fine if people hadn’t gamed the system, shared passwords, and engaged in consumer fraud.”

Ouch. Not really the mindset you want to enter in with. That aside, the proliferation of MoviePass did force theaters to create their own subscription plans — plans that are still going on. While I may not agree with most of what Farnsworth has, he is right about customers not wanting to be locked down.

“There’s an opportunity. They’re coming in with higher price models, and I don’t think people want to have to use an AMC card here or a Regal card there. They want one subscription and the freedom to go to any theater that they choose.”

Would you trust a MoviePass subscription with a ten-foot pole? Let us know down below!

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SOURCE: Variety