MoviePass Shuts Down Its Service After Years Of Floundering

MoviePass is officially shutting down its discount movie ticket service, the company announced Friday.

Customers will no longer have access to the service beginning Saturday. 

MoviePass’ parent company Helios and Matheson Analytics Inc. (HMNY) said it was “interrupting” its service “because its efforts to recapitalize MoviePass have not been successful to date” in a press release.

MoviePass is closing up shop after floundering over the past two years as it failed to find a sustainable business model in an entertainment industry that has leaned further toward on-demand streaming services.

The ticketing company faced a major embarrassment in July 2018 when MoviePass ran out of money and couldn’t afford to pay for its customers’ movie tickets, causing an outage.

At that time, its customers only had to pay a flat fee of $9.95 a month to watch one movie a day. The following month, MoviePass’ parent company Helios and Matheson Analytics Inc. posted a loss of $100 million over one fiscal quarter.

As it struggled to stay afloat, MoviePass slashed its subscription service from one movie ticket a day policy to three tickets a month.

In April of this year, Business Insider reported that MoviePass had lost over 90% of its customers. The company faced another major setback in August when it confirmed that a security flaw may have exposed MoviePass customers’ records.

HMNY said it would continue to seek financing to bring back MoviePass’ services, but appeared uncertain if those efforts would be successful.

“The Company is unable to predict if or when the MoviePass service will continue,” HMNY said in its memo.