MoviePass Officially Responds To Monday Meltdown & Future Tentpole Blackout Plan
Following a Monday where MoviePass parent company Helios & Matheson saw their share price plummet to below $1 (it’s now trading at $0.82 as of 11AM EST) and its app go dark, the monthly movie ticket service put out a press release this morning entitled “MoviePass Accelerates Plan for Profitability” further underscoring their initiative to re-arrange deck chairs on their Titanic.
Meanwhile Mastercard responded to the MoviePass melee this morning with the following statement, “We are aware that MoviePass was experiencing technology issues impacting the normal use of their program at theaters. We have reached out to them to understand the issue further.” Last Friday following a Thursday night outage, MoviePass’ parent HMNY had to secure a $6.2M loan to cover “merchant and fulfillment processors”.
In MoviePass’ release this morning, they report “Today, the company has implemented several elements of a long-term growth plan to protect the existing community and set it up for future sustainable growth.” As of this August, it will be a year since HMNY rebooted MoviePass with a $9.99-a-month-one-ticket-a-day program.
Such cost-reduction and subscription revenue increase measures by MoviePass include:
–Actions that have been implemented to currently cut the monthly burn by 60%. We’ve seen with the MoviePass outages this weekend, that they continue to serve Landmark Theatres, which they have an exhibition partnership with.
–A future increase of the standard pricing plan to $14.95 per month within the next 30 days.
–First Run Movies opening on 1,000+ Screens to be limited in their availability during the first two weeks, unless made available on a promotional basis. A conditional detail like this will truly make its subscribers head over to AMC Stubs A-List. Why even have MoviePass now that it can’t cover popular movies at the box office? The company’s press release this morning acknowledged that they shut down ticket buys for Mission Impossible – Fallout over the weekend, “the first film included in the measure. This is a strategic move by the company to both limit cash burn and stay loyal to its mission to empower the smaller artistic film communities. Major studios will continue to be able to partner with MoviePass to promote their first run films, seeding them with a valuable moviegoing audience.”
–Implementation of additional tactics to prevent abuse of the MoviePass service.
“Over the past year, we challenged an entrenched industry while maintaining the financially transparent records of a publicly traded company. We believe that the measures we began rolling out last week will immediately reduce cash burn by 60% and will continue to generate lower funding needs in the future,” said Ted Farnsworth, Chairman and CEO of Helios and Matheson Analytics.
“These changes are meant to protect the longevity of our company and prevent abuse of the service. While no one likes change, these are essential steps to continue providing the most attractive subscription service in the industry. Our community has shown an immense amount of enthusiasm over the past year, and we trust that they will continue to share our vision to reinvigorate the movie industry,” said Mitch Lowe, MoviePass CEO in a statement.