I'd never heard of MoviePass until yesterday, but I'm confused - both by how it isn't losing money terribly, and by why the theaters would oppose it. From what I've read, MoviePass effectively purchases the tickets from the theaters, at full price, and then transfers them to it's subscribers. A) How could that possibly be economically feasible? Their subscription fee is so low that it's hard to imagine they have many subscribers who under-utilize the service. I'd think that pretty much every subscriber is going to at least 2 movies a month, and many are obviously going to more, so how are they not spending more on tickets than they're taking in in subscription fees. (Maybe it's been high enough to date that they benefit from under-utilization, but at the new price, I don't see how that's remotely possible). B) If the theaters are getting full face value for the tickets used by MoviePass' subscribers, why would they care? If anything, it'd seem like people would go to more movies using MoviePass than they otherwise would, so that's more tickets sold for the theaters. Whether the individuals are saving money at MoviePass' expense should be irrelevant to the theaters. Why is AMC (and my understanding is other theater chains as well) bothered by this? If MoviePass eventually goes out of business, so be it. But in the meantime, they're selling tickets for the theaters. Obviously I'm missing something.
Demented and sad, but social, right?