Subscription-based ticket service MoviePass has temporarily suspended their service, claiming the need to make improvements to their mobile app.
Users attempting to access the app were greeted with the following message starting earlier today –
To improve the MoviePass subscriber experience, we need to improve our mobile app. We plan to make the improvement by utilizing an enhanced technology platform, which is in the final stages of completion,
To enable these improvements over the coming weeks, we will temporarily interrupt the MoviePass service for all our subscribers effective at 5 a.m. ET on Thursday July 4, 2019.
A second screen informed subscribers how their subscriptions would be adjusted to give credit for the number of days that the service would be unavailable.
Variety is also reporting that the pause in service is so the company can “recapitalize in order to facilitate a seamless transition and improved subscriber experience once the service continues.”
At its peak last summer MoviePass had upwards of some $3 million subscribers paying a monthly $9.95 fee in order to see a maximum of one movie a day every day of the month. However, it was never able to leverage the data collected on those subscribers’ moviegoing habits in such a way as to become profitable. In order to stem the flow of money it was losing, the company initiated a number of restrictions to the service. The result was a loss of a majority of their subscribers, with MoviePass retaining just a diehard 225,000 customers.
While some are saying that this could be the final curtain call for MoviePass, I am reluctant to right them entirely off. Their demise had been forecasted before and yet they kept plugging along and they have already outlived rival service Sinemia, which shut down this past April.
Granted, at some point the company is going to fail and my own MoviePass card will come out of my wallet and go into a drawer next to be Waldenbooks and Boarders Readers Club cards. But until then, while I can at least break even with what I am paying in a monthly subscription rate, I will continue to use it.
