Not sure how ticket pricing works, or what sort of deals theaters could work with the publishers, but if they had only sold tickets through moviepass after the listed showtime, I feel like they could have made it work.

Moviegoers would really only be able to take advantage of less popular movies and/or showtimes because buying the ticket so late risks a sellout or bad seats (might not be able to sit near friends). The income would mostly be gravy / found money for publishers because it would mostly be people who wouldn't have gone otherwise. Moviepass might have been able to work out some sort of rev-share based on number of tickets sold so they could guarantee some income from each member's monthly payment. Hell this might even get you over the hump into AOL / Planet Fitness territory where you're almost entirely sustained by revenue from people who forgot they're paying for their subscriptions (I assume this was always the ultimate goal for Moviepass).