Would you consider $30/month to be a lot?

I pay €23.40/month (about $27.50/month) to be able to watch as many movies as I want in all German UCI cinemas. There are no limitations (I think our record is watching five movies in a day) or surcharges. (I think some select newly renovated or built cinemas do take surcharges for certain special seats or cinemas, but I’m not affected in the city I am in.)

That’s definitely worth it for me, considering that I watch a couple hundred movies per year in the cinema. (You need about 3-4 movies/month to easily get above the €23.40.)

The other big chain chain cinema in the city (cinemaxx) offers a similar flat rate (but at a higher price) and this flat rate hasn’t been in place forever, but for at least a couple of years. I would have assumed that you can get something similar everywhere and if not, why not?

I had the same at Cineworld in Ireland a few years ago. I think at the time I was paying ~€15/mo and a single ticket was €8.

At the time there were a few restrictions, you needed to pay more for 3D or IMAX, and you had to collect tickets from the counter. This last part meant going at peak times was discouraged (as you needed to queue and weren’t guaranteed a ticket), so I usually went at off peak times when the cinema was usually empty.

Are multiplex cinemas really completely filled so often? We always just show up 15 minutes before the film starts and never had any trouble. I mean, we are sad when we can’t find a row with no one directly in front of or behind us …

Obviously you shouldn’t watch the new Avengers movie during the first couple of weeks, but I wouldn’t watch it during those weeks even if I had no flat rate. Cinemas full of people are awful. (Also, I think I can even order online, but in practice that was never necessary and I do want to sit next to my friends.)

This certainly seems like a way for cinemas to drive up utilization.

If my local Cinema (incidentally Cineworld) offered it I would seriously consider going there more often.

Is this not the same thing?

https://www.cineworld.co.uk/unlimited

For reference, at my local Cineworld in Greenwich, 17.90 is less than the cost of two adult tickets.

Mine's in Germany, I assumed it's part of the UK chain because of the name. After some searching I'm still not sure whether it is. If it is it seems like the management has pretty much abandoned it - Here's the website (pricing): https://cineworld-luenen.de/kino/tree/node4217/city280

Yes. It's too much. I might see only one movie in a month.

Then the movie pass doesn't apply to you. Why even respond to this? Go see your one movie, and others who watch more than one can invest in a monthly pass.

But it does - the whole point of MoviePass, or what cinemas come up with on their own to defeat/replace it, is to remove dollars every month from the pockets of people who don’t see a lot of movies.

Sorry, I don't see what your point is. MoviePass nor the theaters require you to buy a monthly subscription. Go pay for one movie, and be done with it. If you're dumb enough to buy into subscriptions and not use it, that's your issue. This isn't anything new anyhow, Netflix makes money off of people never returning movies for a year.

No, it's to remove dollars every month from the pockets of people who THINK they see a lot of movies, but in reality don't. Just like Costco or any other membership-based wholesaler depend on people having the illusion of value in bulk when in reality a lot of people probably break even or come out worse, when waste is factored in.

Movie theatres probably have high fixed costs and a low variable costs. As such it can be in their best interest to drive up utilisation, even if the revenue per customer per film seen goes down.

> Then the movie pass doesn't apply to you. Why even respond to this?

Because this is a discussion forum and OP is discussing this price point.

Bah, according to the website there's no UCI cinema in the south. Also as far as I know our Munich Cinemaxx doesn't have and never had such an offer.

It’s quite hidden, actually: https://www.cinemaxx.de/zeitkarten

€400 for a year (€33/month) and you have to pay it upfront.

I would probably go for it if I had to, but that’s close to my personal limit of what I’m willing to pay. Especially the whole prepaid aspect is a bit hard to swallow. (Since I have my UCI Unlimited Card now for more than a year I can cancel it monthly.)

I recently signed up for Cinemark movie pass for $8.99 a month. What's amazing is that their commercial[1] seems to strongly suggest the tickets are a discount. It never explicitly says so.

It's hilarious because a weekend evening ticket is $7.75 a ticket, and if I buy an IMAX ticket, the "premium upcharge" is exactly $1.76, the price needed to cost the exact same as a normal IMAX ticket ($10.75).

The only reason it makes sense for me to get it is how often I buy several IMAX tickets online, and there's a $1.50 per ticket in "online fees" they waive for movie club members. There was a cost neutral way to avoid online fees before, but they removed it when they launched this to push signups.

I visit the theater enough that it makes sense to do this, but it's sole benefit to me is removing penalties... not gaining any sort of positive discount.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yIfdw2XgPXs

> I recently signed up for Cinemark movie pass for $8.99 a month. What's amazing is that their commercial seems to strongly suggest the tickets are a discount. It never explicitly says so.

They probably are in high-cost urban markets which probably account for a large share of their volume.

> It's hilarious because a weekend evening ticket is $7.75 a ticket,

My local Cinemarks' prices for weekend evening tickets for standard-format 2D (they don't have IMAX, but do have XD at an upcharge) range from $11.75-$12.75.

But even then... why sell a plan providing me no discount? Shouldn't I get the same discount others would off their tickets?

It's strange to hear there are places Cinemark has significantly higher prices: I live in a fairly affluent suburban area, my Cinemark is literally around the corner from a significant number of multi-million dollar properties. Anyone who sees movies near me can arguably afford the higher ticket prices.

But thanks for the non-local perspective on the matter!

Keep in mind that urban areas have much higher property values, which get passed down by landlords in the form of much higher rents per sq ft. Chain movie theaters are more or less the same size everywhere you go, so an equivalently sized movie theater in a bustling downtown is likely paying top dollar.

https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2017/8/9/gary-morris-law...

But is the commercial real estate expensive there? In a lot of suburban areas commercial areas can be significantly detached from residential in terms of pricing to to rezoning difficulties.

To add to what dragonwriter said, weekend evening tickets at my local Cinemark theatre is $14.50 for a 2D movie in its first or second week.

Local vs. National pricing is always funny like that. For example, a local doughnut chain had a sale that was actually $0.01 more expensive than the local price.

On the other hand:

"Unsurprisingly, Manhattan (average adult ticket price of $12.59 when matinee pricing is included) was the most expensive of the city’s five boroughs. Not a single Manhattan theater we studied offered a sub-$10 price for a regular adult ticket. The average cost of the borough’s 28 theaters was $14.30."

This one just happens to be my closest, preferred theater:

"The most expensive regular adult ticket in New York City was for $17.49 at the AMC Loews on Manhattan’s Upper West Side."

At those prices, MoviePass is a ridiculous deal for me.

Source: https://www.valuepenguin.com/2015/04/movie-ticket-prices-ins...

It doesn't need to be that restrictive. Just a couple of dollars more than a one standard deviation consumer's monthly spend (or whatever they settle on).

The unit cost of one person in a cinema is normally negligible after all, so a specific cinema just need to convince members to spend a little more, and to always spend it at their cinema. Moviepass does neither of these things.

This is definitely a model which can work for cinemas. Just not at this price point and business model.

Here's the problem, or at least part of it; executives don't usually give a damn what the most reasonable option is. This comes across their desk and they want to know how much they can get away with. It may not need to be that restrictive, sure... but the question they're looking at is how restrictive it can be while still netting a profit.

The other problem is that I think the cost of someone using a subscription service will be higher than the average moviegoer, simply because going to the movies often is cost prohibitive for a lot of people.

Sure but if cinemas aren't full (and they rarely are except for opening weekend) the actual cost of having someone in the theatre is nothing. If the target customer sees 2 movies @$12 each a month it doesn't matter if they see 10 at $30 total as long as they aren't filling the cinema - the cinema is still making $6 more off them, plus any snacks they buy.

Maybe it's a matter of just not allowing subscription passes for opening weekend (or only at the door if it's undersold rather than in advance). Maybe you get your seat allocated at ticket pick up rather than in advance so full-fare paying customers get the best seats. There's obviously going to be a compromise somewhere, but it doesn't have to be unworkable.

Do theaters pay studios per showing or per ticket sold? If it’s per ticket sold, then monthly passes could be cost prohibitive for theaters: they would end up eating the cost of people going to 5 movies in a week, while owing the studios more. If they pay per showing, then monthly subscriptions with caveats like “only 30 seats for monthly passes available, until an hour before the show, when all seats become available” could make sense.

> Do theaters pay studios per showing or per ticket sold?

Percentage of revenue, i.e. per ticket sold [1]. That said, the studios' take rates vary "as you move into the second and third weeks of release," when "the percentage starts to swing to" a greater take rate for the cinema. A movie pass which blacks out the first N weeks after release could thus be economical (if something the studios would fight tooth and nail).

There are some super shady deals here. If you want to be able to show $BLOCKBUSTER, you might have to agree to pay for a minimum of N seats/day of showings of $UTTER_CRAP. If nobody shows up, the studio still gets paid, and of course the stars of $BLOCKBUSTER don't see a cent of that money.

There is nothing long term about these contracts. Movie studios can change the deal at any time and theaters have almost zero leverage.

The thing is that ski season passes are like this and people love them.

> so they can announce their revolutionary chain-specific Pass for just $30/month

I know film buffs who would grab this deal in a heartbeat. The cinemas would win, too, by turning brand-indifferent customers into loyal ones (without having to invest in reclining seats or liquor licenses).

This is one of the reasons of why traditional businesses are failure in driving disruption. They simply don't get statistics and long tail.

> A CEO of tech company

I worry we are approaching peak hubris

I guess technically the end hasn't been written yet, but doesn't the fate of MoviePass validate your Kellogg MBA's fears?

MoviePass is just an experiment. An important thing they have proved is that there are a lot of people still interested in going to theater and reason they are not doing so is because of lack of flexibility in current business model. I don't see any theater chain learning from this even while they are still going on the same path as RadioShack and Blockbuster. I think eventually MoviePass or some other startup will come around and they will start their own popup-theaters to implement business model such as this.

>MoviePass is just an experiment

People will go to a lot of movies if you make them free while burning through VC money? Holy shit what a scoop!