Hollis Johnson/Business Insider
- MoviePass executive vice president Khalid Itum teased an upcoming announcement of a new unlimited monthly subscription plan to Variety on Thursday.
- The unlimited plan was a big reason for the struggles of MoviePass last year, leading to the service temporarily being shut down because it ran out of money.
It's hard to figure out which saying fits best for MoviePass these days. Is it, "If at first you don't succeed, try, try again?" Or is it, "Those who do not learn history are doomed to repeat it?"
Because it sounds like the embattled movie-ticket subscription company is readying another go with an unlimited monthly plan.
In August of 2017, MoviePass got a wave of attention and subscribers when it dropped the monthly price for a subscription to $9.95. The plan let you see a movie per day. But by the summer of 2018, that too-good-to-be-true plan turned out to be just that, as the company temporarily ran out of money. This led to the startup instituting a cap on the number of movies its subscribers could see per month in order to keep the company afloat financially.
But in a Thursday story in Variety — along with promoting the company's three-tier pricing plan (which Business Insider originally reported in November) — MoviePass hinted at the comeback of an unlimited plan.
MoviePass executive vice president Khalid Itum told the trade that next week the company plans to announce "some sort" of unlimited plan but did not go into details or reveal how much the monthly price will be.
Read more: A whopping 58% of MoviePass users canceled their subscriptions last year, according to a new study
As MoviePass once again tries to regain trust with moviegoers, behind the scenes the company and its owner, Helios and Matheson Analytics (HMNY), are dealing with unsettling times.
HMNY is in danger of being delisted by the Nasdaq, and the company has filed to make MoviePass a separate public company.
Inside the walls of MoviePass, there has been months of low staff morale, as its CEO Mitch Lowe has passed day-to-day executive duties to Itum. Things have only elevated since Business Insider reported in December on employee allegations of inappropriate behavior by one MoviePass consultant toward some of the women in the company. This led to people leaving the company, including one product manager who, in a resignation letter emailed to the entire staff, described the work environment as "dangerous and toxic."
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