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Comment by RepressedEmu | Hacker News Reader

This model introduces disincentives to building value since they don't actually want their subscribers USING the service. They just want them paying for it and forgetting about it like a gym membership. Also at $10 a month wouldn't a subscriber have to average <0.7 movies a month to break even? Monetizing with targeted ads doesn't seem like they'll be able to make their money back. Is there something I'm missing here?

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Theaters make money on concessions, so they would still really really want you to go as often as possible, as long as you buy popcorn

Thats how the theaters make money but I'm talking about how MoviePass is making their money since they are paying the cost of the ticket.

If this catches on, you won't really be able to use it weekends or evenings without arriving quite early. Teens and those with more free time will benefit. That leaves weekday matinees available for most of us. Moviepass is probably banking on the fact that few working adults will go to more than one or two weekday matinees in a month.

Like the gym membership, you'll keep paying because you might go, but in most cases you won't actually go.

Concessions is how theaters make money not ticket sales. They get a higher percentage as a movie get's older, but in many showings less than 1% of the seats are filled.

Another consideration is people that go to a lot of movies are likely not be working 9-5 and would avoid the times when theaters are packed.

Just add another $5/mo for free popcorn and drink.

I hadn't thought about the lowered prices from non-peak times. Thats a good point. It just seems like the people who would want to pay for a subscription to the movies are inherently people who go multiple times a month. Even a $6 matinee would cost more than their subscription. So how many "non-users" of the service do you need to pay for the "super-users"? I'd say at least 4-5x

After they "verify the market" they will start cranking prices up.

They've already been running this at $50 or $60 a month, why would they drop the price just to raise it again?

MoviePass intends to hold an initial public offering by March. I think they're just dropping the price to show investors how fast they can "grow" before the IPO.

I think this offers the best explanation for such an unsustainable pricing option. Thanks for the info

I joined up about a year ago at $30/month. For 3 months, I averaged about 5 flicks per month, which was a net gain over the cost of the individual tickets.

Then I got a notice that they were increasing my fee to $40/month and I promptly cancelled. Sure, I could have upped my movie frequency a bit to recoup the extra cost, but that was a little too often to be worth it.

$30-$40 makes much more sense. I was just baffled by the $10 per month price point advertised in the article.

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