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Comment by smaili | Hacker News Reader

> The Plano, Texas-based company on Tuesday said customers who pay a monthly fee of $8.99 will receive a credit for one movie ticket a month.

> It’s also the cinema industry’s first direct answer to MoviePass, a New York start-up that offers unlimited movies in theaters for $9.95 a month.

How do they expect this to be successful when the average customer should be able to understand 1/day > 1/month?

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Because one per day is completely unsustainable and they only need to last longer than MoviePass burns VC money and fails?

It's only unsustainable because of the current royalty structure. Most of the money actual theaters make is on concessions and I'm more likely to buy concessions when I'm not paying $15 per person for a single movie ticket.

How much would you pay for concessions if the theater didn't show movies because they didn't like the royalties? Or if they didn't show the movie you apparently want to see?

It's not a binary decision, the royalty structure is set in stone by movie studios and distributors. Theaters have no choice right now on how to license the movies and that's the part that is unsustainable (because theaters have almost no control over the price of a ticket). That's the truth of why the theater model is unsustainable and is more and more hard pressed to get traffic.

Giving theaters more lee-way on how to pay for the movies they are licensing will allow for much more competitive opportunities and differentiation between theaters.

But how can MoviePass change the royalty structure?

i have always heard that movies make most of their profit from concessions. if that is the case, i'm not at all surprised they're failing. i've always brought my own snacks because they're cheaper and/or tastier, and i rarely get given shit for it. the minute they make me feel uncomfortable about it, i stop patronizing that theatre.

Concession prices are why I stopped going to the movies. Unless I eat right before hand, I'm going to want a snack during the movie, but I'm not going to pay $15 for a Coke and some popcorn.

its pretty much the gas station model

>Because one per day is completely unsustainable and they only need to last longer than MoviePass burns VC money and fails?

Are we sure about that, though? I assume these people are not complete idiots. I assume they had a team of economists and business analysts crunch the numbers on this beforehand. The cost of a ticket seems trivial to the added benefit of having your theater full of hungry, thirsty patrons at what would otherwise be off-peak times. I think this is going to be a massive boon to the industry, and may even see theaters evolve into more like "family fun centers" and general hangout locations.

Because most people probably only go to an average of one movie a month (or less), and the new service rolls over unused credits? Basically, if you go to 12 movies or less a year, MoviePass is more expensive.

Not necessarily. Movie tickets in San Francisco run about $14-18. I pay $9.95 for MoviePass, so even if I see a movie every 6-7 weeks, I still come out ahead.

You will come out ahead versus just buying tickets directly, but you will come out BEHIND using this new Cinemark service. The question was how can Cinemark compete with MoviePass, not about MoviePass versus individual seat purchases.

Assuming you have equivalent quality cinemark theaters everywhere you have other theaters. There is one cinemark theatre in SF and it doesn’t show all major films. There are some 8 theaters in SF you can use with movie pass.

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