It wouldn’t be the first time that a company that had failed initially tried to make a comeback, but it feels as though the sun has already gone down on Moviepass, and that whoever is trying to bring it back might be trying to cash in on an idea that was just about retired a year or so ago. Even the people heading up Moviepass were quick to say that they have nothing to do with this, as they’ve completely disavowed the idea of making a comeback, which would make them look entirely suspect if Moviepass does come back and they admit that they were trying to throw people off. That isn’t the overall feeling at the moment though, since not much is known about the fact that a site was set up and a landing page stating that a reveal is coming on March 22nd would explain everything. Moviepass was kind of an awkward idea, to begin with since the fact is that paying $10 per month for a service that would allow a person to see one movie per day is a nice thought, but one has to wonder just how often people are going to make their way to the theater. Even without buying concessions, which is where theaters making most of their money, it’s fair to say that not everyone would be making use of such a service since to make it worth it one would have to watch at least five to ten movies in a month. The stark and unforgiving truth is that it’s not too often that movies rotate that quickly, meaning that people would run out of movies to watch, no matter if they went to different theater chains. Then there’s the problem of figuring out which movie chains would even honor Moviepass.
There were other difficulties with Moviepass that were hard to deal with for a lot of people, but the fact remains that it would kind of cheapen the whole idea of going to the movies. If one had to go so many times to make the card even worth the money it’s likely that people would get tired of going to the theater after a while, and a lot of cards might sit in a wallet or on a dresser or wherever they were set as a person decided to discover the wonders of streaming. The only thing that might make Moviepass worth it at this point would be if the service decided to lump together various streaming sites in order to give people access to said sites for a low monthly payment that wouldn’t add up to the average cable bill any longer. Imagining how many people would jump on that idea is kind of easy since when a person really thinks about it the streaming sites are bound to keep raising their prices a bit as time goes on, and it’s very likely that they could get kind of spendy after a while. But on the other side of that idea is the notion of whether said streaming sites would ever agree to such a thing, since it does sound as though it would be a big loss of revenue if subscribers only had to pay a lump sum for all of them, which would make Moviepass not unlike a cable company unto itself, thereby cutting out a lot of profit for the streaming sites. So to be realistic that sounds like less of a good idea since it’s kind of a non-starter. But thinking that Moviepass might still manage to become a part of the theater experience is still hard to imagine since there’s not enough money there to really make it work. Plus, even if theaters made a sudden comeback either by or before summer it’s fair to say that a lot of people might still not want to spend that much time in a theater during the summer.
If Moviepass extends to drive-ins, which doesn’t sound likely since drive-ins have been existing as their own idea for a while now, it still wouldn’t make enough to get off the ground and continue to ascend. The doubters might be proven wrong when things start up again, but at the moment it’s still very confusing to think that something that wasn’t bound to make that much could possibly make a comeback and earn a profit. We’re going to see what pans out though, and if it does work then a lot of us are going to be shrugging our shoulders and possibly saying that someone figured it out and gave it legs. Some folks might think that it won’t come to that, but we’ll see after the 22nd, and it’s very possible that something will happen that will make Moviepass sustainable. Don’t hold your breath, but there are ways it could be possible.
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