MoviePass will relaunch this summer, co-founder Stacy Spikes said Thursday at a theater near New York’s Lincoln Center, but it’s not clear if any theater chains have partnered with the company yet, and no price point was disclosed.
The revamped service will be available in tiered plans with varying prices, but Spikes did not share what those tiers would cost. There will be a virtual credit system that will roll over each month, and users will be able to earn credits for free by watching advertisements ahead of the movie, according to Spikes, with eye-tracking technology to make sure the user is paying attention.
Spikes said that he wanted to get movie theaters on board with the new iteration of MoviePass, suggesting that they could lure moviegoers to their locations with perks or credits, or could help fill seats during otherwise slow times of day. The service will also allow users to bring a guest, though it isn’t clear if that would be limited to certain tiers, or if additional credits would be required.
The movie subscription service originally gave subscribers access to unlimited movies in theaters for a monthly fee of $9.95 — a price that undercut all major theater movie chains and ensured that MoviePass would lose money on those transactions.
At its peak, the service had some three million subscribers, but it ultimately shut down in 2019 after a slew of technical issues and fluctuating pricing plans that negatively impacted its growth.
Last November, Spikes bought the company out of bankruptcy with plans to relaunch the service.
