MoviePass, the subscription service that spent enormous amounts of venture capitalists’ money subsidizing movie tickets in a bid to upend the theater business model, is officially shutting down on September 14th. The news was announced today via emails to subscribers and separately in a
press release issued by parent company Helios and Matheson. It marks the end of a tumultuous two-year saga that saw a once-popular platform go to extreme lengths to keep its business running, despite the obvious and fraught financial cost.
Last we heard of MoviePass, the company was
laying off huge swaths of its staff, including the team responsible for brokering partnerships with movie theaters,
following a sudden, supposedly temporary shutdown of its services in July. The company didn’t say when it would begin operating again, but monthly and annual subscribers were left with an app that wouldn’t work and a debit card that no longer functioned — and no timeline regarding the service’s eventual return. Last month, MoviePass was also found to have
exposed thousands of its customers’ credit card numbers in plain text online, rounding out a particularly rough few months of bad press.
MOVIEPASS HAS RUN OUT OF MONEY AND ITS PARENT COMPANY HAS NO IDEA HOW TO FUND IT
According to Helios and Matheson, MoviePass was too far gone to save. “On September 13, 2019, MoviePass notified its subscribers that it would be interrupting the MoviePass service for all its subscribers effective September 14, 2019, because its efforts to recapitalize MoviePass have not been successful to date,” reads the release.
between them and Sinemia...they treated customers like shyt
