Author: Brooks Barnes / Source: New York Times
“I don’t believe that today people trust the MoviePass brand,” said Khalid Itum, right, who is taking over day-to-day operations ticket subscription service from the chief executive, Mitch Lowe. Karsten Moran for The New York Times
LOS ANGELES — The last year has been a roller coaster with 20 loops for MoviePass and its customers.
The fast-growing subscription service for movie tickets spent months insisting that it was not running out of money despite evidence to the contrary. That emergency loan to keep operating? All part of the plan. That auditor’s report about escalating losses? Ignore it. Abrupt changes in service — some movies are restricted, now they’re not — arrived without warning or explanation.
Now, MoviePass is asking for forgiveness and hoping to move forward by unveiling a three-tiered pricing structure that takes effect on Jan. 1. As part of the course correction, Mitch Lowe, the company’s chief executive, will turn over day-to-day operations of the company to Khalid Itum, an executive vice president at MoviePass. Mr. Lowe, a former Netflix and Redbox executive, will keep his title and instead focus on long-term strategy.
“I don’t believe that today people trust the MoviePass brand,” Mr. Itum said in an interview at a MoviePass office in West Hollywood. “We have to earn back that trust. And we’re going to earn it back not by spending on marketing but by fixing the product.”
Mr. Itum, describing himself as a movie buff who recently went to see “Boy Erased” in a theater by himself, insisted that MoviePass had taken to heart “the good, the bad and the ugly” of the past year.
“We need to be empathetic and think about our members — what it’s been like for them to be whiplashed and wake up one day and this is different and now this is different,” he said.Mr. Lowe added: “The way we have been going about this is not the right way. We listened. We reassessed.”
MoviePass struck a nerve in August 2017 when it began offering an eye-popping deal. For $10 a month, members could see a movie a day in theaters, including new releases, 365 days a year. To a degree, the plan depended on traditional subscription economics: more people pay than actually go.
Within months, three million people had signed up — far more than Mr. Lowe had anticipated — pushing MoviePass to the brink. In August, the company reduced the number…
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