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Earlier this month, MoviePass announced that its customers, previously allowed to see one movie per day, would be limited to just three per month. At the time, the company said that the change wouldn't affect annual subscribers until their plan renewed. But it looks like MoviePass has changed its mind yet again, and probably to nobody's surprise. The company began circulating an email today notifying annual plan subscribers that they too will be limited to just three film showings per month.
"As of today, aligned with Section 2.4 of our Terms of Use, your annual subscription plan will now allow you to see three movies a month instead of the previous unlimited offering, and you'll receive up to a $5 discount on any additional movie tickets purchased," the email said. "This is the current standard plan now in effect for all current and new subscribers." And because the move is retroactive for the current monthly period, which varies by customer, some users will find that they've already seen their three movies once they receive the notification email. The company claims it "intends" to expand its offering of blockbuster and independent films in light of the plan adjustments.
Source: https://www.engadget.com/2018/08/24/moviepass-annual-subscribers-three-movie-plan/
(Score: 2) by requerdanos on Monday August 27 2018, @11:37PM (1 child)
It's not that I am having trouble grasping that they totally thought their plan wasn't stupid, and that I need your benevolent assistance in explaining it.
Nor is hindsight substantially involved.
Their plan is:
1. Lose a little money.
2. Lose more and more money.
3. Lose gargantuan amounts of money in order to try to appear to be major players in the business via "volume."
4. Then exploit that position to negotiate better prices that could cause them to start making money. That's got to work!
5. ...
6. Theoretical profit!
It does not require hindsight, nor your frankly brilliant analysis, to see that this plan breaks down at step 2 or 3
One of the problems with it (not the only one) that you can see right up front is that "Lose lots of money" is a guaranteed for-sure item, while "Force those stingy theaters to re-negotiate prices" is at best a maybe. This is not a brilliant plan that somehow ran off the rails. Failure is where these rails go.
Consider this: The profit in step 6 would be just as likely to come from answering that Nigerian prince that keeps sending them offers of millions of dollars. That's readily apparent to, I would submit, many people*, just by reading the 1 through 6 above.
Primary difference being that with the Nigerian prince plan, they go down alone; with the 1-6 plan, above, they lose and lots of gullible customers lose right along with them.
Sorry for any confusion I caused. Some people don't think in math, and I regret forgetting this.
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* Of course, many people also send their life savings to His Royal Highness Prince Of Nigeria, so not *all* people can see things so clearly, I admit. But it's there to see.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 28 2018, @02:12AM
Except you're a fucking moron that still doesn't get it.
That wasn't their plan, their plan was to get a large enough number of subscribers that they could fill seats in theater chains and negotiate a discount based upon the fact that they could A) fill those empty seats B) represented a form of advertising that theater chains pay for in other ways and pocket the difference and C) direct those movie goers to movies that they might otherwise skip even though they might be interested in the film based upon analytics.
Just because you're so fucking stupid that you don't understand what they were planning on doing doesn't change the fact that it was at least plausible when they were doing the planning. Now, you're using the information about how it worked out in order to recast what the plans were to make yourself feel smart.
Personally, I think it was a somewhat moronic idea in the first place, but it was at least somewhat plausible that it could have worked out. The main issue was that they promised too many viewings for the price with too few limitations and the results were more or less as one would expect.