After an unfortunate debacle that vexed movie goers hoping to see Mission Impossible: Fallout on opening night, MoviePass released a lengthy statement apologizing for the problem, which was essentially that it ran out of money, and explained the new pricing model going forward.
The statement opens with an apology announcing that the issue had been resolved, calling it an “outage in the app”. It went on to speak about the new peak-pricing model and explained that it is the alternative to raising subscription prices. The idea is that it will be more expensive to see a popular movie on opening weekend than it will be if you wait until the hype dies down.
The real kicker, though, is about what movies and theaters are available. Part of the statement reads, “certain movies may not always be available in every theater in our platform.” Which is to say that in some cases, you may not even be able to see popular movies at all. It then tries to lessen the impact of this by comparing it to streaming sites where not every movie is on every platform, but that seems like a pretty different set of circumstances.
Blackouts for popular movies aren’t new for MoviePass, but they’re going to be a more common practice from now on. Basically, you might not get to see Mission Impossible: Fallout in your local theater this weekend.
The statement ends by talking about how much good the service does for the entertainment industry by encouraging people to go see movies at non-peak times. At the end of the day, though, the MoviePass restrictions are only growing, and with more subscription services coming out, it doesn’t look good for MoviePass.
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