ICYMI: MoviePass is Back with its $9.95/Month Plan

It’s baaaack! No, that isn’t intended to be a scary sentence, but for some of you it might be. MoviePass is switching back to their $9.95 a month, uncapped plan, which was extremely popular, but as we all know – highly unsustainable. There’s a catch though. If you want to participate in this price, you will have to pay for an entire year up front. Which means, you’re going to have to shell out $120 all at once. And that’s not necessarily a high amount. The problem with MoviePass is whether or not you’ll be able to get your money’s worth before the company goes under. Which, I’m kind of surprised hasn’t officially happened already. I mean, we’ve seen a few close calls where I thought – surely this is it – but they keep going.

Another catch to consider is the fact that this particular plan is limited to only 2D films – but that’s not necessarily a bad thing, is it? I mean, of course, if the option to go to a more expensive 3D movie is on the table, I’m going to jump at the chance, but a 2D movie isn’t the worst thing to ever happen. Further, you may be restricted due to high demand. This particular plan is regularly $19.95 a month, which suggests that they’re trying to win back some customers.

Is it worth it, though? From a financial perspective, you would have to go to about 10 movies in order to make your money back. I don’t know about you, but with my hectic schedule one movie, a month is hard to get to. That’s not to say that I don’t want to go, but certainly a challenge. So paying up front might not be viable for everyone. I guess I’m saying that if you do go ahead and pay for this plan upfront, be prepared to find out one day that MoviePass is no longer, and your $120 just went down the drain. Yes, this definitely sounds a little cynical, but from a sustainability perspective MoviePass isn’t doing well.

We also know that MoviePass has changed its plans too many times to even recall in this post. During the last attempt at an unlimited plan, they offered this same deal, which was derailed largely because they weren’t prepared for the massive number of people who signed up for the plan! In fact, they expected to lose money while they convinced theaters and movie studios to agree to profit partnerships in exchange for promotion. But they didn’t expect to lose so much money as quickly as they did.

“We continue to implement what we’ve learned to combat violations of our terms of use, which we believe will enable us to offer more subscribers the joy of seeing more movies on the big screen. Today marks a notable stride in that direction, and we’re excited to be able to offer this new uncapped plan after tireless research and development efforts.”

Mitch Lowe, MoviePass CEO

Can MoviePass learn from its mistakes? That remains to be seen. What we have is a system for MoviePass fans to marvel in the fact that this service is back in a way that resembles MoviePass at the height of its popularity. Stay tuned on how this one turns out.