Yet another price drop for MoviePass. Following statements that the app was tracking customers’ location, which CEO Mitch Lowe quickly backtracked on, the company is again dropping its pricing in an effort to attract more sign-ups in the wake of the bad press. Today, the cost of MoviePass annual subscription has dropped again to $89.95, which works out to be $6.95 per month, plus a one-time processing fee of $6.55.
Typically, the MoviePass monthly subscription is $9.95.
This is not the first time MoviePass has tried this tactic to lure in new customers to its all-you-can-watch moviegoing service with over 2 million subscribers. The company previously ran the same promotion back in November 2017. And as with that earlier sale, MoviePass is again not saying when this promotion will end – only that it’s for a “limited time.”
The company has come under fire for a series of misleading statements, which has left some customers wary about using the service. At the Entertainment Finance Forum earlier this month, Lowe had told the crowd that MoviePass knows what customers were doing both before and after they go to the movies. But he later rescinded those remarks, saying that it was the company’s “future vision” he was discussing, and not where it is today.
That’s still not all that comforting to customers who are waking up to the fact that their personal data is what will make MoviePass affordable in the long-term – if it ever gets there, that is. The cost of users’ movie tickets are going to be subsidized by their data, and the ability for studios to target them with ads.
However, buying an annual subscription to MoviePass is a bit of risk for another reason, as well – the company is burning through cash extremely fast, and has only been able to hang on through continued investments from majority owner Helios and Matheson Analytics Inc. It expects to reach break-even early next year, Lowe recently told TechCrunch. But of course, that could be excited bluster about the future, too.
