The company, which features both a website and a phone app for its users, provides a subscription-based service similar to Netflix, Hulu and Amazon Prime with a flat $9.95 monthly fee. The difference is that you’re able to see movies in theatres — including Chakeres Theaters in Springfield — as much as you want.
MoviePass’s new service just launched in August. The fledgling company has more than 150,000 subscribers across the county and one major investor in the form of Helios and Matheson Analytics Inc., an information technology and solutions firm that just recently purchased a majority stake in the company.
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“From day one with MoviePass, my goal was to afford consumers the best possible deal we could offer them … Putting them in theater seats has always been our mission and this is a dream come true,” MoviePass CEO and Netflix co-founder Mitch Lowe said in a news release about the company’s partnership with Helios and Matheson.
Would-be subscribers have some things to watch out for with the new service. Presently MoviePass only covers access to one 2D showing of a movie per 24-hour period that can only be purchased the day you intend to go, and while the company says it covers more than 90 percent of all movie theaters in the U.S., theater selection and show times can be limited.
The service also won’t cover tickets to 3D, IMAX, Fathom events or special fan screenings hosted by some of the major movie complexes.
Some critics have said MoviePass’s offerings might not be enough to give Netflix a scare and movie theater chain AMC called it a “small fringe player” and said they don’t plan on participating.
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