Despite ending in liquidation two years ago, MoviePass is set to return this summer complete with new tiers, a virtual currency, and facial tracking.
Launched in 2011, MoviePass initially found great acclaim as a mobile ticketing service, allowing subscribers to purchase a fixed number of tickets per month for a regular fee. Changing rules, reports of user tracking, surge pricing, and fraud allegations, however, eventually dragged the platform into bankruptcy; the company ceased all business operations in 2020.
Since then, original MoviePass co-founder Stacy Spikes acquired the company out of bankruptcy, and he’s been working with an engineering team to rebuild the once-popular app for a new generation of moviegoers. As Deadline reports, in a Thursday presentation at the Lincoln Center, Spikes outlined plans for the service’s “second act”—including virtual currency (credits), tiered plans, and the option to “bring a friend.”
Flexible in-app credits can be used to pay for peak or off-peak showings (determined by individual theaters), transferred to someone else, or simply roll over each month, accruing more digital tender for upcoming flicks. Customers can earn additional credits by watching video advertisements via a new feature called MoviePass PreShow.
As the New York Post reports, Spikes describes how PreShow uses an app to check your eyeballs are focused on the screen showing each ad. He describes it as creating “a transaction between you and the brand.” He was also keen to point out this facial detection system and the data it collects, “doesn’t go to the cloud, nobody goes through anything other than you and your information in yours. And you opt in to do it on your own.”
There is no word on pricing, what options are available with each cost level, or if additional credits can be purchased, and if so, how much they cost. Unlike the original MoviePass, though, the unlimited movie tickets for $10 per month doesn’t look to be making a comeback. Credits, facial tracking, and microtransactions all look to be core features, though.
“We’re going to make mistakes. We’re not going to get it right out of the box. It’s going to be trial and error,” Spikes said on Thursday. “But if you guys can help us build a marketplace, we really think we can take this places.”
