MoviePass takes over theater industry
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As movie theaters struggle with stubborn sales, Mitch Lowe, CEO of a business called MoviePass, has an extreme proposal for how to get more people into seats. For the price of a single ticket each month, people can watch all the showings they want.
Mitch Lowe, a co-founder of Netflix, took over the CEO position at MoviePass in June of 2016 when the company was selling $50 unlimited subscriptions and had 20,000 subscribers. MoviePass is serving as a rescue plan for the slowly-sinking movie theater industry.
For $9.95 a month, customers can get into one standard 2D showing every day at any theater in the U.S. that accepts debit cards. MoviePass will pay theaters the full price of each ticket used by subscribers.
“When I heard about MoviePass, I couldn’t let the opportunity slide,” senior Sho Dixon said. “I spend so much money on movie tickets that I’m just about broke.”
The cost of a movie ticket has almost doubled in the last two decades, according to Box Office Pro. While the average cost of a movie ticket in Atlanta is more expensive than the national average, $8.84, the $13.50 charge is pretty average for cities of Atlanta’s size. This high rate in movie tickets makes MoviePass a hard deal to pass up for movie fanatics.
As a co-founder of Netflix, Mitch Lowe took over the CEO position at MoviePass in June of 2016 when the company was selling $50 unlimited subscriptions and had 20,000 subscribers. MoviePass is serving as a rescue plan for the theater industry that is slowly sinking.
“I’ve heard about MoviePass a couple of times,” Bea Porges, junior at Grady High School, said. “It seems like something my parents would like since they have nothing to do a lot.”
In August of this year, MoviePass dropped prices from $50 per month to their current fee. When they decided to drop the price, 150,000 subscribers signed up in just a couple days.
This idea of a ‘Netflix for theaters’ has risen many questions. How will the business not go bankrupt, since MoviePass has to pay the price of every ticket to the theater? A frequent moviegoer is defined as someone who goes to the movies at least once a month, which is 13 percent of people based on MPAA statistics. When the price for subscriptions was $50, the average customer tended to go to the theater twice as often, so that price covered the three times a month that these subscribers were heading to the box office.
“I live right in Atlantic Station, so being able to walk to the movie theater in 3 minutes is already really cool,” junior Jaden Medley-Fowlkes said. “They take MoviePass at that theater, so I had to get one. I’d be stupid not to.”
I'm a junior here at Grady High School. This is my first year on the Southerner staff.