Max has released a trailer for its documentary MoviePass, MovieCrash, coming to the streaming service on May 29. And frankly, it looks awful. The trailer makes the film look like the worst kind of bubbly, hyperbolic TV news report, full of over-the-top voiceover, staccato sound bites, and sensationalist quotes, all trying to inject riffy, bouncy energy into a story that doesn’t need zhuzhing up. The actual doc may be nothing like this; trailers are notoriously unreliable about reflecting what a movie is actually like. But either way, I don’t care. I’m all in, for one reason: I just want to see the faces of the people behind the story I followed with absolute nonstop disbelief for two full years of “Oh God, what now?” schadenfreude.
MoviePass was around for six years as a largely under-the-radar, somewhat pricey subscription service for movie tickets before analytics firm Helios and Matheson acquired it. In 2017, the revamped company introduced an unbeatable subscription service: Members could get unlimited movie tickets for about $10 a month. “How could this business model possibly work?” industry-watchers asked at the time. The answer: It couldn’t. Helios and Matheson lost hundreds of millions of dollars on the project, while visibly, awkwardly, and very publicly flailing to redefine the company’s intentions every few weeks.
While all this was happening, I was the Movies Editor over at The Verge, and we reported on every new beat in the story as it happened, because our readers loved knowing what new nonsense MoviePass was up to. What made the story so fascinating and engaging was how absolutely clear it was that Helios and Matheson did not know anything about the industry it was trying to disrupt, and how rapidly it kept changing the story about what MoviePass was intended to do.
The company clearly thought its subscriber base would give it leverage over the industry, and was willing to endure huge losses while it tried to figure out what to do with that leverage. One week, it was effectively trying to blackmail theater chains into giving it discounts, or risk MoviePass diverting its subscribers to different chains. Similarly, it tried to extort studios into paying it for advertising, or risk the service blocking subscribers from buying tickets to those studios’ latest movies.
At one point, the company boasted about the tracking data it was collecting on its subscribers with the intention of selling that data to investors; after a backlash, it abruptly walked that idea back. Then MoviePass suddenly announced it would become a film distributor. Meanwhile, it changed its pricing and the services it offered too many times to count, often with no notice for subscribers, who would suddenly find themselves opted into new plans, even if they’d already left the service. At its lowest point, the company sent out a cutesy email claiming it had hired a dog as its new marketing director, and apologizing for the “ruff” time subscribers were having with the service. The company’s shareholders sued. The subscribers did, too.
I don’t need to watch MoviePass, MovieCrash for a summary of all this — I lived it, and not that long ago. What I want is to see the people behind the debacle. Throughout the two-year barrage of frantic, nonstop news about MoviePass’ endless abrupt retoolings, the public face on every new debacle was CEO Mitch Lowe. But there were obviously so many more people battling for control behind the scenes, desperately trying to land on the solution that would turn the ship around. All I want from a MoviePass documentary is to know what it was like for everyone who wasn’t Lowe, who wasn’t in front of the cameras trying to justify how Helios and Matheson was hemorrhaging money, being investigated for fraud, and watching its stock plummet 99 percent. I just want to put faces to this wild, freewheeling disaster, at long last.
Here’s the official rundown on the film, from Warner Bros. Discovery and HBO Original:
The HBO Original documentary MOVIEPASS, MOVIECRASH, directed by award-winning filmmaker Muta’Ali (HBO’s “Yusuf Hawkins: Storm Over Brooklyn”), debuts WEDNESDAY, MAY 29 at 9:00 p.m. ET/PT on HBO and will be available to stream on Max. In a span of eight years, MoviePass went from being the fastest growing subscription service since Spotify to total bankruptcy, losing over $150 million in 2017 alone. MOVIEPASS, MOVIECRASH chronicles the company’s beginnings as an innovative movie ticketing model beloved by cinema goers, exploring the visionary mission of its entrepreneur co-founders, its impressive early successes, and its precipitous downfall caused by mismanagement and corporate greed.
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