AMC Is Beating MoviePass at Its Own Game | Hacker News Reader

AMC Is Beating MoviePass at Its Own Game

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65 pointssmaili51 comments

Moviepass tried to do the same thing ClassPass did. ClassPass launched with a too good to be true business model, grabbed huge market share and is now successfully pivoting to a more sustainable model. The difference is that ClassPass has leverage with the studios, because there are thousands of small, one location gyms out there. Movie pass doesn’t have the same leverage because they are providing access to much larger chains with lots of locations.

Yet another example of reason from first principles :)

... wait, what? ClassPass is making money?

Note I said “more sustainable” :)

They’ve been pivoting around in search of something that can make them profitable eventually.

I tip my cap to all the loyal users of MoviePass out there; I have long waited for the day when investors would be willing to subsidize my hobbies and you've been living in that world for months. Bravo, ladies and gentleman.

I have to wonder, though, why you'd want to go to the movies regularly these days, with all the dreck that Hollywood has been putting out in recent years. Maybe it's time for you guys to hit the $1.99 rentals on YouTube/Amazon/iTunes more often.

To get out of the house with my girl and not spend a fortune.

To use it as an excuse to join other members and see more films with new friends.

To get out of the hot summer sun and enjoy a few hours of entertainment inside a nice cool theater.

To simply enjoy blowing movie pass investor money that they were too dumb to hang onto because it’s hard to spot a unicorn and pets.com was taken this cycle.

its really amazing how many people don't realize that money is simply thrown around as frivolously as it is in this sector

The movie theatre experience is one of a kind. You can't come close to re-creating it with your phone or tv.

I would have agreed when I was a kid and a huge TV was a 27" 480i CRT. But now you can get a 85" 4k HDR screen at home, I'd say you can come close. Better than many theaters.

It's not only the A/V that goes into the experience. Not saying it is a perfect experience, but a large TV or even a projector isn't really the same.

Indeed. It is the same as saying that one should never go out for a walk, because you can easily walk some rounds around the table in the comfort of your own house.

It's the 'out' part that is important!

Except a theater isn't out, you are just trading one dark room for another.

The theater itself is not the experience. The 'out' thing is, though.

You can still have the "out", like Dinner and coffee at a restaurant. But the specific watching a movie part is "in" whether it is at a theater or your living room.

Bikeshedding

You committed the fallacy of posting a fallacy without support.

In a theater, you sit in the dark, if you are a good citizen, you don't talk. 90% of any social piece to going to a movies happens at dinner before or after, which you can still do and then go home to watch a movie.

My 9 foot projection screen with dolby surround sound in my light controlled living room would say otherwise.

You can with a VR headset though.

I think the StarVR will get there one day. Here's a review of it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GvFBUvfpQJ8

The only problem is right now they are targeting business, but I hope to see a consumer version one day and if they can get it lighter, comfortable for 3 hours of continuous wearing and can replace a theatre screen.

I don't see why it can't replace a TV or movie experience.

Most movie theaters don't give me headaches and make me feel like I'm getting carsick.

Carsick?? Why would 1 to 1 movement make you carsick?

Are you talking about gearvr? Or other “not really vr” headsets?

None of them are hi-res enough to really do that job.

Can't argue taste! I really like the recent blockbusters (eg all the marvel stuff). The more ridiculous, the better! Looking around at the cinema I feel like I'm not the only one with that opinion. Usually when I go watch some Iron Man 8 kind of movie the room is filled with faces of eager anticipation.

Going to the movies is just asking for a talker or phone user to ruin it. Most of the major chains have a warning about it, but it continues to happen on a regular basis. You have the options of either risking a fist fight or missing a good 10+ minutes looking for staff.

I want a "movie theater" that is essentially a private room with a TV that me, the spouse, and kids can watch it in. We can also pause for bathroom breaks and get food ordered/delivered. That's often why I just wait for the BluRay release and watch at home, the experience at the big chains is terrible.

I don't know if Alamo Drafthouse is in your area, but it's a movie theater with a very strict no talking/phones policy. If you violate that policy they promptly kick you out of the theater.

Watching movies there has really made me appreciate the benefits of the big screen again.

I’ll state it here again, but if anyone reading this lives within a reasonable distance to an Alamo Drafthouse, it is absolutely worth it.

I live in Dallas where we’re fortunate to have a half dozen of them. They’re all great, the food is excellent, staff is great, and on and on and on. I love this place and I go at least once a month probably and more during busy months.

It’s worth it!

The downside of course being the constant background noise of chewing, drinking, glasses clattering, lights under every table, and subpar quality projectors.

Can’t have it all.

Yeaaaa I go once a week and this is not a thing. I think this place literally has it all.

- Never noticed chewing / drinking / glasses

- The lights under the table is so dull I honestly don't even know where it is or how they even see it. I've looked under the table and can't seem to find it

- This may just be me but their projectors are just fine

I've not noticed any of this in my local theater, but it's possible that it happens in some locations.

Unfortunately we don't yet. I'd definitely give them my business if we did.

I have visited theatres that perfectly match your description in Taiwan, with the exception that the film has to be out on DVD. You choose the size of room you would like (some rooms are large enough for parties, some are comfortable for two), pay for the amount of time you would like to book the room (with discounts for longer amounts of time or late night bookings), and choose from their library of DVDs. You are shown to your room and the movie is played. There is a phone to call the front desk and you can order food and drinks to be brought to your room. The chain I visited a few times is called U2MTV [1].

[1] http://www.u2mtv.com/

Talking is maybe more of an issue, but taking a phone call in the middle of a movie doesn't work around me. It has only happened once, near the emotional peak of The Aviator in 2004. The theater wasn't that crowded, and after just a few seconds I yelled "Take it outside, buddy!" across twenty seats. He took it outside. I was ready to stand up and yell again, and walk over to him and yell again, if necessary. If he's ruining the movie for me, I'm sure as hell going to ruin his phone call. But that was the only time it has ever happened to me, and I see a medium number of movies. I saw an unusual 14 movies in my three month MoviePass membership before I canceled, with zero phone calls or talkers.

Well, except for pausing the movie and if you are okay with the private room being your car...

https://www.usatoday.com/story/travel/experience/america/fif...

I was surprised to learn that MoviePass has been around for 7 years!

They started in 2011 and only had 20k subscribers in 2016. It wasn't until late 2017 that they sold majority stake to Helios and dropped the price to $10.

That's quite a Hail Mary pass. What lead to that after ~6 years? Were they out of money? Out of patience?

The disrupted is disrupting the disruptor in the [var] market.

Arguably this is going to be the case going forward.

Increasingly, incumbents can move as fast as "disruptors" because information flows so quickly and nearly every major incumbent has learned that "disrupting yourself" is key to long term survival.

Incumbents can see threat trends as they are gaining traction, rapidly invest in an in-channel copycat (because they have so much cash on hand) and since they already have the user base, deploy the solution more easily.

I'm increasingly convinced that the orthogonal flanks that startups have been able to do to incumbents in high tech over the last 20 years, is not viable anymore.

I actually ended up doing my first credit card chargeback on movie pass after the changes they announced at the beginning of August. I had canceled and there was one more month but then they announced the movie selection thing.

Suddenly when I went to look on a saturday no theater within 10 miles of me had a show time for anything they had selected.

Part of the reason I got it over Sinema is because moviepass worked at my local indie film theater. The moviepass selection would probably never include things I wanted to see.

Side note if that theater offered an unlimited pass I'd jump on it in a heart beat. Their screenings are never full and they tend to bring back older things I'd want to see. When the Ghost in the Shell live action came out they showed the original anime version for example.

This was inevitable. Moviepass was the dumbest startup idea I’ve ever seen.

Well they don't put anyone's lives at risk so surely that gets them out of say, the bottom 5%?

Not really.

If they had stuck with trying to move people into just cheap tickets up front, nobody would have complained and they might have been able to reach critical mass. The problem is that the VC's wanted to cash out in 18 months or go broke--well they're getting what they wanted.

Movie theatres have a lot of unsold inventory on off times. They probably would have been willing to cut all manner of deals for those times.

However, they were never going to give you chunks of primetime unless you had a huge cudgel.

One of the big problems now they’re making it near impossible to see movies during the cheap times. You’d think they’d incentivize people to go to the Tuesday cheap ticket shows.

The idea is fine. The execution was garbage. They created a race to the bottom that no one felt compelled to join.

It was the clearest example of a start-up designed to build marketshare without any idea how to profit from that marketshare.

Anybody can create a business trading $5 for $6 dollars and get millions of subscribers but that doesn't make that business idea good.

They had a plan but it backfired when the theaters refused to give them a cut of concessions. Also backfired when their funded movie flopped.

They thought they could use their millions of customers as leverage against the theaters but that was a ridiculous plan.

The race to the bottom seemed to be an attempt to capture a userbase which could then be directed at particular films whose publishers paid MoviePass or used directly as a cudgel in negotiating better pricing from theaters. Might have worked eventually if they had been able to keep bleeding money.

As a consumer, I think I got a much better deal out of AMC crushing this particular middle-man before things got out of control.

Once MoviePass folds, what would be AMC's incentive to keep A-List going?

They still want to pull in more people that may buy high margin concessions. Their per user costs are pretty low they can cut the price per ticket down to pretty much the amount they have to pay the studio.

AMC gets concession revenues. It may well be that losing money on tickets is made up for by increased sales of popcorn, drinks, candy, etc.

My understanding is that their entire idea is the race to the bottom. What's the fine idea I'm missing?

They started the subscription service at $50 per month which was sustainable. It only started going downhill when they reduced the price to $10 per month. They had to reduce the selection of movies you can watch. Cutting 80% of the price obviously means cutting at least 80% of the service.

The idea is a feature, not a standalone product.

i'm happy for moviepass, even though I never signed up. I like that it's brought some change to the movie theatre market, and as a result i can now use the Cinemark subscription plan that sprung up recently. It's a total win for me. :)

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