MoviePass, the too-good-to-be-true theater ticket subscription service/venture capital nightmare, may be returning in some form. Business Insider reports that original cofounder Stacy Spikes has purchased the company back.
Spikes was granted ownership over MoviePass on Monday by a Southern District of New York bankruptcy court judge, with the purchase finalized on Wednesday. Spikes reportedly placed an undisclosed bid to the trustee handling the bankruptcy of Helios and Matheson Analytics, the company's previous owner who purchased MoviePass in 2017 as it struggled to stay afloat.
You can watch our video on MoviePass' demise below.
"We are thrilled to have it back and are exploring the possibility of relaunching soon," Spikes told Business Insider. "Our pursuit to reclaim the brand was encouraged by the continued interest from the moviegoing community. We believe, if done properly, theatrical subscription can play an instrumental role in lifting moviegoing attendance to new heights."
MoviePass imploded in incredible fashion back in 2019, thanks in part to a seemingly wildly unstable business model and subsequent (and dramatic) changes to that business model. These included price surging, removing popular movies from the app (I myself was jilted out of seeing Mission Impossible: Fallout at the last minute), even changing users' passwords to lock them out of the app. The pitch was genuinely astounding: Users originally only had to pay $7 a month to watch as many movies in theaters as they liked. When Helios and Matheson acquired MoviePass in 2017, the company launched a subscription tier for $10 a month to see one movie per day. Subscriber count skyrocketed from 20,000 to 100,000 in two days. At its peak, MoviePass boasted more than 3 million subscribers. Spikes, who says he raised concerns about the company's sustainability, was fired from in 2018.
Like all things too good to be true, this proved wildly unrealistic. After months and months of speculation, Helios and Matheson Analytics shut down MoviePass for good in September 2019.
Weirdly, MoviePass began teasing some sort of comeback earlier this year with a new website with the MoviePass name and featuring a mysterious countdown. It's unclear if this is part of Spikes' plan to revitalize the brand.
It's possible Spikes may have reacquired MoviePass for a comparatively modest sum. In the June 2020 bankruptcy auction for Helios and Matheson assets, Business Insider reports no competitive bids were made. The bankruptcy trustee set a minimum bid of $250,000, but Helios and Matheson listed the estimated value of MoviePass between $1 million and $10 million, according to Variety.
Spikes told Business Insider that he acquired MoviePass for less than the $250,000 minimum amount. Customer data and emails were not part of the sale, he added.
Spikes has launched a new website dubbed iwantmoviepass.com where users can submit their email for future notifications about the service.
In the years since MoviePass' demise, theater chains like AMC have started their own filmgoing subscription plans, like AMC Stubs A-List.
Joseph Knoop is a writer/producer/burned former MoviePass subscriber for IGN.