MoviePass is offering a limited-time subscription that will allow users to pay $6.95 a month to watch a movie a day for a year. The service typically costs $9.95 a month, but the new deal comes with a catch. Users have to commit to a 12-month subscription.
“We did a soft launch yesterday,” MoviePass CEO Mitch Lowe told Variety. “We’re discovering there’s much more interest and demand than we ever imagined. We keep hearing from customers that they want an annual plan or they wanted some way to give MoviePass as a gift.”
MoviePass is trying to become the Netflix of cinema-going, but right now it seems to be more focused on building a customer base than turning a profit. The company pays theaters the full price for a ticket, so it is in essence subsidizing its users’ movie-going and losing money each time they check out a film. The average movie ticket cost $8.60 through the first three quarters of 2017. In some major cities, such as Los Angeles and New York, it sets customers back more than $10.