MoviePass Refuses To Die, Introduces Three-Tiered Pricing Structure

If you thought we left MoviePass behind with 2018, you'd be wrong. The embattled ticketing service is not going down without a fight, and its latest battle de jour are new pricing tiers that will entice new and old subscribers back to the app. But the MoviePass three-tiered pricing structure may not be the deal that it promises to be (what's new?). And in the meanwhile, MoviePass' parent company Helios and Matheson Analytics further distances itself from the ticketing service (again, what's new?).

The Playlist reports that MoviePass is debuting a new three-tiered pricing structure that will free its users from its current strict three-movies-a-month, six-movie rotation plan. Kind of. The three separate plans include the lowest $9.95 plan for three movies a month, which only allows you the options of the six assorted movies rotated each day; the $14.95 plan that allows the subscriber three regular-format movies of their choice per month; and the final $19.95 per month which allows a choice of any three movies, including one premium format in 3D, IMAX, etc.

Sounds like a better deal than before, right? Not necessarily: this being MoviePass, there's some fine print to read before you go back to the ticketing service. The prices for the three tiers are described as "Starting at..." See, these prices differ based on your geography, which means if you living in a busy metropolis like New York City or Los Angeles, the prices will likely be drastically higher.

The Playlist reported Charles Barfield decided to test out the prices and discovered that even in a suburb of Milwaukee, Wisconsin, that prices were at least $3 more than advertised:

So, as a diligent movie-goer, I decided to play a game of "What Does MoviePass Actually Cost?" It's a fun game where you go to the MoviePass website, enter in your zip code, and you find the true price of what your monthly fee is going to be. Now, I live in a suburb of Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Not much of a booming metropolis, but definitely not a small town. And to my non-surprise, the price for my three tiers are actually $3 more than advertised, with prices of $12.95, $17.95, and $21.95, respectively. Oof.

It's up to your discretion whether this new three-tiered structure is a good deal. But at this point, MoviePass may be delaying its inevitable demise — something that even its parent company is aware of at this point.

Meanwhile, Deadline report that Helios and Matheson made public its intention to spin MoviePass off into its own separately-traded public company, effectively severing its ties with the failed ticketing experiment. A new SEC filing set the stage for the unit's planned spinoff, in which MoviePass would remain under the control of Helios but would have its own financial structure and be traded separately. And with Helios and Matheson's stock price remaining around 2 cents a share, this seems like the most effective way for the company to right its ship: by dumping the heavy cargo.