MoviePass suffered an outage recently, the reason for the outage was that MoviePass ran out of money. They have since borrowed a further $5 million from hedge fund Hudson Bay. Earlier this month they added surge pricing for things like opening day weekend and popular movies. Unfortunately it doesn’t seem like surge pricing is even enough, users are reporting that they are unable to use MoviePass to see ‘Mission: Impossible Fallout’. In the app these screenings are showing up as a ‘premium screening’ and are unable for redemption, there isn’t even any option to pay a surge price to see the movie.
It seems like at major chain theaters it’s impossible to purchase tickets for this movie, whereas theaters MoviePass has formal agreements with (e.g Landmark) it’s possible to purchase tickets. It isn’t clear if this is affecting annual pass holders as well or not. At this stage I can’t see MoviePass lasting much longer, I wonder how competitors Sinemia & AMC A-List are going.
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Error Messages
What Does Error ‘Moviepass There Are No more Screenings’ Mean?
This means you’re trying to view a restricted screening. Discussed in more detail here.
‘Premium Screening Not Supported’?
People are reporting seeing this even when it’s not a premium screen they are trying to view. It’s basically the same error as above and happens on new release movies.
Any chance getting back annual payment in credit card dispute if they go bankrupt?
I know we are basically beating a dead horse at this point ,but I’m surprised no one has reported that MoviePass hasn’t worked since last night. Literally no results on Google.
Yet reporting site sites show huge percentages of people not able to use.
I received an error telling me I could not check in and recommended I use an e ticketing theater. (Very few have this. My town has 7 Theatres none of which I can use.)
“Error making reservation. Try again later. You can use MoviePass at an e-ticketing theater”
I received the reimbursement for the movie I paid for out-of-pocket Friday but this time support made it clear they won’t be doing so.
https://ibb.co/jSmmDo
Note:
Strangely enough several big movies like Jurassic world and Deadpool 2 disappeared from the listings altogether about an hour ago making me think that perhaps they’re going to be up and running again soon. (Perhaps by saving money by having fewer move movies to choose from.). As of yet, I’ve still not been able to a check into any theater.
Here is the best article I’ve read so far regarding moviepass and it sums it up quite nicely: https://gizmodo.com/mission-impossibles-box-office-failure-shows-why-we-ne-1827967391
Key sentence: “Without a willingness to work with MoviePass, theaters will never be able to see what MoviePass can do. But it might be able to get an idea of what happens without it. ”
Without moviepass, theatres are doomed. It’s just too expensive and inconvenient to go to a movie – especially in a world flooded with content. Moviepass allowed one to see movies that they wouldn’t normally see at a reasonable cost. Sinemia’s pricing doesn’t allow that. It just encourages people to use it to see a few blockbusters a month – with pricing that you can basically get with a matinee or other discount mechanism. So while the industry dogged moviepass they were just hastening their own demise.
Sinemia has an $8 plan (if paid annually) for 2 movies per month. These days what matinee or discount mechanism gets you a movie ticket for $4? If you see only 2-3 movies per month Sinemia sounds like a perfect fit. Sure, it’s not the all you can eat buffet that Moviepass is (was?), but did anyone really expect for that model to survive?
Well, you’re correct about the $4 – but that pricing is the “summer promotion” and you have to pre-pay for 1 year. The theater in my neighborhood has 1st run tickets prior to noon for $6. Tuesday and Wednesday, that pricing is good all day. Seniors everyday is $6. All that without having to prepay. I’m sure there are other theaters that have similar promotions.
My point is the media and others are singing the praises for AMC, Sinemia, etc. but non-stop dogged moviepass. If there was a glitch in their service or they tweaked their plan – everyone collectively clutched their pearls – threatened to cancel, etc. – conveniently forgetting that absolutely no one was even remotely close to offering the same value proposition.
I’ve read comments about people saying they would go to the theater everyday and get a ticket just for the Regal points. Then they would either give away their ticket or throw it away – those people were probably the first to whine whenever moviepass did anything to their terms of service.
And so, here we are…
Well I had never heard of moviepass until this article but I did see MI6 on Friday and can definitively say it was great!
Annual pass could not see ANY movie Friday afternoon at Regal. So sad; I love the program!
I’m an annual purchaser. I can’t see MI in my Cinemark that’s 2 mi’s from my home, but it’s available in the Flix theater about 6 mi from my home. I might wait 1-2 wks to see if it comes to Cinemark, because I hate the fact that employees walk around you constantly at Flix to bring people their foods/drinks.
Just got back from seeing MI in Dolby. Moviepass didn’t work. Only listed mission impossible, and like everyone else it was grayed out. Now other movies were listed. Chat supported auto closed any attempt to get help.
So I used sinemia instead.
Monthly moviepass holder. Looks like I’ll be dropping that and sticking with sinemia
Think they ran outta money again. No movies are showing up beside MI which is blackout
If you look at the stock price of this company, not sure if it can live to see August.
I have that dreaded feeling too. I am down $60K on the stock in this debacle. I am sure there will be a class action down the road since they were still talking rainbows and unicorns last week before it imploded with the reverse split. I loved the service and the concept and saw a ton of films I would have never paid for normally. They said that they had access to $300M in funding and would break even at 5 million subs (They are up to 3) and that people naturally would slow down going after the novelty wore off. I have a friend who has been a member for 4 months and has only gone once. Looking back at say Netflix, they had massive start up costs to license the dvd’s, postage both ways, storage, and a lot of people to sort incoming and outgoing dvd’s. MP only needed really IT and customer service people. I really thing they should have charged $19.95 a month from the start. I go to both Regal and AMC. I like Regal more, but if MP dies I will go with the AMC program. MI was not even showing on my app yesterday here in Ft Myers, FL, ended up going to The Equalizer, which was actually good.
I hope things turn around, and I’ll be a subscriber until they shut the doors. Hopefully people will release all the FUD surrounding this and pull their heads out of the sand.
I have annual pass from Costco and the only movies that I can check in to are like 3 independent movies at 3 independent theaters 20 miles away. It simply lists no times at all for all other movies at all the theaters from big chains and a locally owned chain. There is also no checkin possible for unlisted movies. For example at a nearby large chain theater with lots of screens, it has many listings of Mission Impossible greyed out and no other movies listed at all.
Tried to see Blindspotting tonight and it showed surge pricing ($8!!!) for my wife but not for me. MI was grayed out. It would not even show Ant Man, and that’s been out for a week or two. We signed up on the same day for the same plan. It was already a headache to have to be at the theater to buy a ticket, making it hard to get a decent seat, but this probably signals the end for us. We’ll go move over to Sinemia I think.