MoviePass is changing the value of the movie theater experience

For a big city theater, there are always customers. But take a more rural cinema, have 60% of the moviegoer population base convert to MoviePass... for the theater, it may see a slight uptick because it isn't that expensive for the users and the cinema still gets the full ticket price. Then imagine MoviePass closing shop - are the 60%, hooked to 10$ or whatever a month while generating twice that in ticket sales, going to come back once MoviePass isn't around any more? There will be a sharp noticeable drop, and this is what scares theater managers. Hell even if it's just 100 people using MoviePass that's $2k in ticket sales a month (given 10$/ticket and 2 movies a month per person), and another $2k a month in sales from soda, popcorn, food and merch.

Especially as outfitting/retrofitting a theater with the newest advancements in dozens-channel audio, 8K 3D digital projections, the newest anti-piracy crap the studios force upon the managers and other stuff is a huge upfront capital investment... I would be scared shitless if I had to do such an upgrade because the customers demand it but I knew at the same time that a lot of the customer base might simply drop off at once due to circumstances way outside of my control.

http://www.paulgraham.com/submarine.html

If the consumer no longer pays $12, or fewer consumers are willing to pay $12, there will be some kind of reckoning higher up the chain between the theaters and the film companies in splitting up the decreased topline revenue.

If MoviePass captures the ticket-buying market in a big way and becomes the gatekeeper for consumer movie-going money, they could feasibly develop direct relationships with distribution companies in the film industry and drastically diminish whatever power theater operators currently have.

As noted by others, there's a common belief theater profit comes largely from concessions. That defines their relationship with the consumer. MoviePass threatens their relationships on the other side, with the film industry, where we are the profitable product.

That's my guess.

Typically in the first week they keep anywhere from 0-25%, but after the first week or two they can be keeping as much as half.

MoviePass is going to be squeezing them for their share.

Moviepass’ success is dependent on the same thing as any subscription model like this. Article author seems unable to recognize that he is a top 1% (maybe even rarer) user of Moviepass and the majority of subscribers will see 1 or sometimes fewer movies per month.

The $2.85 small bag of popcorn cost less than a penny in raw material to make. We made minimum wage with no overtime (theaters got a tax loophole back then; not sure if they still do) so even factoring in labor and electricity, it's still a huge profit margin.

Theaters chain execs love it I'm sure. Still even if/when MoviePass goes under, the studios will probably take a small hit for a while, but I'm sure they'll recover.

Anyway, at the time there was no way to book tickets online, you just had to show up and if there was space you’d get a ticket. As such I’d usually go on Saturday early afternoon when it was usually pretty quiet.

(This is in NYC, it may be different by region)

We used to see movies exclusively on Saturdays or Wednesdays, when it’s cheaper, and only went to certain theaters. Now when we decide to see a movie we go whenever we feel like it, wherever we feel like it. We usually bring our own snacks/water too..

We decided to see The Last Jedi at 1:05 AM without any forethought and saw it on a massive screen with Dolby sound.

I can’t get a VC to return my cold calls/emails, but hey, at least a VC is paying for our movies.