During its brief, meteoric run in 2017, MoviePass was a cult favorite for habitual moviegoers, promising to let them see all the movies they wanted at theaters across America for a monthly subscription fee. Then, in the blink of an eye, the company’s business plan infuriated theaters and ultimately set its parent company Helios and Matheson Analytics on fire, forcing the service to shut down last year. A new MoviePass is now relaunching nationwide, but it's not exactly the same thing. The company has shifted to a credit system, with users receiving a debit card loaded with the cost of tickets that they can then use at their preferred theater.
To get started, you’ll need to register your MoviePass card. The app will ask you to select a theater and showtime, then confirm your ticket purchase. Depending on your membership tier, the amount of credits your ticket costs will vary. You’ll receive your debit card within a few days, and it will be ready to use at any participating theater.
One of the main problems with MoviePass’s old business model was that it couldn’t make money if too many people saw multiple movies per month, so it tried to slow them down in several different ways. According to an FTC complaint against MoviePass, the company “slow-walked power users by invalidating their passwords, telling them they had been randomly selected for ticket verification, and requiring them to submit photos of ticket stubs that were often unreadable.” (It's still not clear how many subscribers were affected by this.)
