MoviePass’ long death march continues as the company announced Friday it’s cutting its annual subscription plan.
In an email (obtained by Variety) dispersed to annual subscription holders, MoviePass detailed its decision:
“We want to thank you for being a loyal member of our annual MoviePass plan,” the company wrote. “Your commitment to MoviePass has contributed to making our vision for an accessible and affordable moviegoing experience a reality. After experimenting with different models and options, we believe that our current monthly plan captures the need of our community—keeping prices low while continually striving to offer a wider selection of films.”
That “wider selection of films” bit is especially hilarious, considering one of MoviePass’ worst revisions has been restricting users to certain films. Want to go see Mission Impossible: Fallout, Crazy Rich Asians, or Christopher Robin? Well, tough tickets, man. MoviePass is currently only offering puppet murder comedy The Happytime Murders, Kal Penn thriller Searching, and Air Bud-meets-Terminator travesty A-X-L, among a few other indie titles that probably won’t be playing at your local AMC.
MoviePass’ annual subscription cost customers $89 a year and offered one movie per day. MoviePass is offering a refund to annual subscribers who will see their subscription cut short.
MoviePass now only offers one plan: Three movies per month for $9.95, with all the usual caveats of “select films.” One can only assume that the company is still operating at a loss off from that business model, so it’s anyone’s guess why it hasn’t shut down to cut its losses.
MoviePass began its slow turn toward the end after the company ran out of money in July, prompting the company to shut down the service for a day. It only resuscitated itself after borrowing $5 million from a hedge fund company. The company also ran into allegations of sneakily resubscribing customers who previously canceled their plans.
MoviePass also began tacking on an additional charge for “surge pricing,” aka movies that prove popular, like Mission Impossible: Fallout and 10pm Sunday showings of Hotel Transylvania 3. Yeah.
H/T AV Club