MoviePass is down again. Is this the end?
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It's been a whirlwind few days for MoviePass subscribers. There was the Thursday service outage, the Friday revelation that said outage was due to financial difficulties, the Saturday hype-pology, and continuing headaches all weekend.
Now, on Monday afternoon, the service is acting funny once again, and in a way that suggests larger troubles for the company. Users attempting to look up screenings are reportedly finding very few options to choose from.
Even in the busy borough of New York City's Manhattan, Mashable entertainment editor and MoviePass subscriber Erin Strecker found only two theaters with screenings available: The Landmark at 57 West and Cinépolis Chelsea.
Trying to check the listings at every other theater on Manhattan Island returned a blank result and an error message:
The scene is the same on the MoviePass subreddit, where the top post -- bearing the title "MoviePass is still Down, check-ins reported not working. You can discuss your issues in here." -- is filled with posts echoing the same basic fact: Most theaters show no screenings, and for those theaters that still show movie listings, e-ticketing is the only option.
E-ticketing is the mechanism MoviePass uses that allows people to set up and confirm their movie selection entirely inside the app. For most theaters, MoviePass subscribers use their member ID card to get into screenings; only a handful of partner theaters support MoviePass e-ticketing, and they're not major chains like AMC or Regal.
In other words, the moviegoing options available to subscribers at this point has been whittled down to almost nothing. It's not clear why all the listings vanished for so many theaters, but there's plenty to speculate about given the events of the past few days.
What's more: It's 5:34 p.m. ET on Monday afternoon as of writing, and, from what we can see, the MoviePass Twitter feed stopped replying to all customer inquires shortly after 11:30 a.m. ET. The silence is deafening.
There's also this Monday report from Business Insider describing an all-hands meeting during which CEO Mitch Lowe made it known that upcoming summer releases like Christopher Robin and The Meg won't be available to subscribers.
Mashable reached out to MoviePass for comment on the afternoon service disruption and we'll update this story if and when we hear back. Even if the situation isn't as grim as it seems, it's hard to imagine how the company will manage to hang on to subscribers if the wider range of non-partner theaters don't return to the service.
Topics Film
Adam Rosenberg is a Senior Games Reporter for Mashable, where he plays all the games. Every single one. From AAA blockbusters to indie darlings to mobile favorites and browser-based oddities, he consumes as much as he can, whenever he can.Adam brings more than a decade of experience working in the space to the Mashable Games team. He previously headed up all games coverage at Digital Trends, and prior to that was a long-time, full-time freelancer, writing for a diverse lineup of outlets that includes Rolling Stone, MTV, G4, Joystiq, IGN, Official Xbox Magazine, EGM, 1UP, UGO and others.Born and raised in the beautiful suburbs of New York, Adam has spent his life in and around the city. He's a New York University graduate with a double major in Journalism and Cinema Studios. He's also a certified audio engineer. Currently, Adam resides in Crown Heights with his dog and his partner's two cats. He's a lover of fine food, adorable animals, video games, all things geeky and shiny gadgets.
