Gadgetory

as an entertainment editor at the verge I spent a lot of time of movies but most people say the opposite last year in the US and Canada theater attendance dropped to 25 year low and I get it these days movie theaters are competing with Netflix and Hulu 4k flat screens and video games and as attendance goes down ticket prices have gone up making the whole thing more difficult to justify in the first place but lately some friends and colleagues have been trying to see more movies or something called movie pass if you somehow haven't heard of it the pitch for movie pass was simple spend 10 dollars a month and you can see up to one movie a day for a lot of people that seemed too good to be true and by June of 2018 over 3 million people had signed up for the service it seems like everybody should win but in reality everybody's losing movie pass its customers and feeders but by popularizing subscription services who he passed may have shown feeders the way to control their own destiny movie pass caught on because it seemed too good to be true and sure enough it was this year alone the services baton switched on surge pricing repeat viewings and theater availability and that's just for starters in the meantime theaters are frustrated because a service like movie past prevents them from competing on things like premium screens and better seating imagine being a Netflix subscriber only to find out on the day that stranger things comes out that you have to take 3 extra bucks to watch it and you can only see it once that's the kind of stuff that movie past customers have had to deal with and that's after the company decided to get rid of its movies a plan before designed to bring it back again I mean look the whole thing really is a mess and it comes down to the fact that movie path doesn't make money the company hopes that when it hits a certain subscriber base size all the math will magically work out in the meantime it's burning through cash causing the stock price of its parent company to plummet the fix apparently seems to be to get its customers to just stop going to movies or if they do to pay up movie past customers taking the hit stress become a pretty common theme what happens when that couldn't get AMC theaters to the negotiating table somethingit's subscribers couldn't access 10 of AMC's busiest locations and what about it was advertising movie that was opening opposite Jennifer Lawrence's new film suddenly its customers couldn't access Jennifer Lawrence movie either that's not to say it's all terrible for some people movie pass really is a great value and that's fantastic and according to the company its customers do spend more on popcorn and concessions which is great for theater owners but it's essentially middleman trying to build its own business on top of what theaters have already done whether they wanted to or not Doug white executive director of the Hollywood Theater in Portland Oregon had some particularly frank thoughts on the subject they suddenly inserted themselves into our business model sold them the same ticket set cheaper food we pass says you know we basically stole your customers and now to get them back we want a clock it's just a weird business model and not something that we're finding terribly friendly you know I mean we've created something that we don't feel like we're dependent on when we pass right like we've created our own and our community our own earths our own benefits that movie pass and see the problem is something like movie passes that it prevents theater chains from competing for your business major chains usually show all the same movies they compete on things like location pricing and quality of presentation laser projection HDR sophisticated surround sound seventy millimeter these are all ways that theaters can compete for your business and lure your away from your 4k living room TV the movie pass ignores that premium experience and the sizable investment theaters made to get it but offering just the entry level 2d experience it dumps theaters down turning in 19th of movies into a commodity experience where the only thing worrying about is in price that's a great if you don't want to spend fifteen dollars to see Deadpool - but is dangerously short-sighted because when you convince customers that movies aren't worth paying for and that presentation doesn't matter you're unintentionally removing every reason for them to leave the house at all there's no denying that movie pass has changed the dynamics so the question becomes how do theater chains react AMC which has had no qualms about talking smack about movie pass in the past recently launched its own subscription service called a list that service cost $20 a month and you can see three movies a week but with no restrictions you can go to AMC prime with Dolby vision or IMAX or anything else the theater has to offer give them that's the biggest chain in the world a lot of people that's going to be pretty compelling we're used to thinking that disruption is the answer to everything and that cheaper automatically equals better but that's not always the case going to the movies isn't experience and the more that theatres can control their own destiny and react to the wants and needs of their customers the better kinds of experiences they'll be able to provide now if they can't control the quality and variety of the movies arriving in their theaters but that well that's gonna be an entirely different video mama mia guys huh huh I know here's what we're doing this is this is how we're starting guys right here this is it okay starting again if I haven't slated that's the slate