The struggles of MoviePass, the film subscription service – The Verge

Former MoviePass CEO admits the $9.95 ‘unlimited’ ticket scheme was fraud

2024-09-17T11:08:34-04:00

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Mitch Lowe in HBO’s MoviePass, MovieCrash documentary. | Image: HBO

MoviePass ex-CEO Mitch Lowe pleaded guilty to securities fraud on Monday over his involvement in a scheme to mislead investors, as reported earlier by Variety and The Hollywood Reporter. With the plea, Lowe admits to making false representations about the sustainability of a $9.95 monthly plan that promised "unlimited" access to movies in theaters.

Lowe, who took over as CEO of MoviePass in 2016, started allowing users to see a movie a day through an unlimited subscription in 2017. But the money-burning tactic eventually led to MoviePass's demise, with the service shutting down in 2019 and later filing for bankruptcy.

Following a settlemen …

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HBO’s MoviePass doc is a snapshot of how C-suites kill companies

2024-05-27T10:00:00-04:00

To many, MoviePass was an overnight sensation whose too good to be true monthly cost was a sign of its potential to revolutionize the theater industry. The promise of being able to see as many newly released movies as you wanted for less than the price of a single normal ticket was intoxicating enough to convince much of the public that MoviePass had a game plan in place.

But there were a handful of people within the company who had long been sounding alarms about its unsustainable growth. MoviePass, MovieCrash - director Muta'Ali's new HBO documentary - is a damning account of how MoviePass' C-suite executives were dead set on ignoring al …

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The execs behind the MoviePass debacle are now facing criminal charges

2022-11-04T18:50:45-04:00

Mitch Lowe and Ted Farnsworth already settled with the FTC over fraudulent activity affecting MoviePass customers, and are being sued by the SEC, but now the former heads of MoviePass and its parent company, Helios and Matheson Analytics (HMNY), are facing criminal allegations of securities fraud and wire fraud.

The Department of Justice announced the charges today, saying false statements made by both men defrauded investors in HMNY when the execs pretended like the company's money-losing $9.95 "unlimited" moviegoing plan had any hope of profitability.

Chris Bond, a spokesperson for Farnsworth, said in a statement emailed to The Verge tha …

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You can now sign up for whatever the new MoviePass is going to be

2022-08-25T09:00:00-04:00

MoviePass is back, kind of. Starting today, you can sign up to be on a waitlist to become a MoviePass subscriber, and if you want to, you should move quickly since the waitlist will only be open for five days. The new MoviePass is scheduled to launch around Labor Day, and its first users will be those at the top of the waitlist.

If you're wondering what, exactly, this new MoviePass is going to be… join the club. This is the company that once promised all the in-theater movies you could watch for $10 a month, only to quickly discover that business plan both infuriated theaters and effectively set millions of dollars on fire. It got so bad so …

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MoviePass is officially coming back

2022-02-10T16:24:30-05:00

Two years after the wildly popular subscription service MoviePass crashed and burned, its co-founder Stacy Spikes is determined to bring it back. Spikes says MoviePass will return this summer.

The company, recently bought by Spikes after his unceremonious ouster from MoviePass in 2018, held its launch event today at the Walter Reade Theater at Lincoln Center in NYC. Spikes began by wasting absolutely no time addressing the Helios and Matheson Analytics-shaped elephant in the room. The firm is now infamous for being the parent company of MoviePass that managed to blow the entire thing up shortly after the firm bought the startup, which becam …

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MoviePass’ co-founder has bought back the company and wants to relaunch it next year

2021-11-11T13:31:58-05:00

MoviePass might be making a comeback soon, after Stacy Spikes (one of the service's original co-founders) successfully bought back the company out of bankruptcy earlier this week, according to a report from Insider. Spikes is hoping to relaunch the company sometime next year, although there are few details on that yet.

"I can confirm that we acquired MoviePass out of bankruptcy on Wednesday," Spikes commented in a statement to Insider. "We are thrilled to have it back and are exploring the possibility of relaunching soon. Our pursuit to reclaim the brand was encouraged by the continued interest from the moviegoing community. We believe, if …

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MoviePass is deader than ever as parent company officially goes bankrupt

2020-01-29T12:54:46-05:00

In case you thought the MoviePass saga would remain a smoldering heap of yesterday's news from here on out, guess again. Helios and Matheson Analytics, the theater subscription service's parent company, has at last filed for bankruptcy, according to The Wrap. While that may sound like it signals the complete end of all things MoviePass, there's one interesting wrinkle: the company may owe subscribers a total of more than $1.2 million.

"As a result of filing the Petition, a Chapter 7 trustee will be appointed by the Bankruptcy Court to administer the estate of the Company and to perform the duties set forth in Section 704 of the Code," reads …

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Why MoviePass really failed

2019-09-19T10:00:00-04:00

Theater-subscription service MoviePass officially shut down on Saturday, September 14th, ending the platform's controversial two-year run as a would-be disruptor of the moviegoing business. Many pundits rightly pointed out that the company's end seemed inevitable the moment the analytics firm Helios and Matheson purchased a majority share in the company, then dramatically dropped its monthly fee in August 2017. The new subscription plan offered users a movie ticket a day - access to films in any theater, in any market - for less than $10 a month, ensuring the company would spend more on its customers than they would pay to use the service.

…

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MoviePass is shutting down September 14th

2019-09-13T16:11:33-04:00

MoviePass, the subscription service that spent enormous amounts of venture capitalists' money subsidizing movie tickets in a bid to upend the theater business model, is officially shutting down on September 14th. The news was announced today via emails to subscribers and separately in a press release issued by parent company Helios and Matheson. It marks the end of a tumultuous two-year saga that saw a once-popular platform go to extreme lengths to keep its business running, despite the obvious and fraught financial cost.

Last we heard of MoviePass, the company was laying off huge swaths of its staff, including the team responsible for brok …

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Thousands of MoviePass customers’ credit card numbers were exposed online

2019-08-20T18:15:28-04:00

MoviePass, the theater subscription service still inexplicably trying to stay in business, left thousands of customers' credit card numbers and other sensitive pieces of data exposed for anyone to find on an online database, according to a report from TechCrunch. A cybersecurity expert named Mossab Hussain, from a Dubai-based firm named SpiderSilk, discovered the unprotected server and shared sample data sets with TechCrunch to confirm that MoviePass was in fact leaving the data unencrypted and accessible to anyone.

According to TechCrunch, the data includes both MoviePass debit card numbers and the actual personal credit card details of cu …

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