MoviePass limits showtimes on the app

AP Photo/Darron Cummings

• MoviePass is no longer guaranteeing that every movie showtime will be available on the app, CEO Mitch Lowe told customers on Tuesday. 
• The news comes less than a day after MoviePass announced plans to hike prices up to $15/month, and make big-ticket films like “The Meg” and “Christopher Robin” unavailable for at least the first few weeks after release. 
• Lowe also says that MoviePass customer support may be limited in the near future, as it prioritizes customers who are already at the theater.

MoviePass is adding a new limitation: Not every showtime for every single movie is guaranteed to be supported by the app.

“Showtimes that are offered through our service will vary from day to day, and every showtime may not be available,” MoviePass CEO Mitch Lowe wrote in an email to customers on Tuesday afternoon. Previously, the service would support every 2D movie showing at all compatible theaters.

This news comes less than a day after MoviePass announced that it would hike the monthly price of its unlimited movie service to $14.99, and that it wouldn’t support big-ticket films like “The Meg” or Disney’s “Christopher Robin” in at least the weeks immediately following their release. The company said this would reduce its cash burn by 60%.

Beyond the changes to showtimes, Lowe also tells customers that it’s changing its approach to customer support, and “access to immediate support may become limited.” He says that its customer support will prioritize those who are already at the theater, with more self-service tools for other customers in the works. 

Lowe further writes that “Mission: Impossible — Fallout” will continue to be unavailable via MoviePass as the company works to reconfigure its business model.

MoviePass and its business model have come under renewed scrutiny in the last week or so, after a service outage on Thursday was revealed to have been caused by its parent company, Helios & Matheson Analytics, running out of money to pay its fulfillment processors.

It took a $5 million short-term loan to get things going, but the app has been plagued by problems and intermittent outages ever since, causing fans and pundits to speculate that this is the end for the service.

Stock in H&M is currently hovering around $0.50 per share; well below the $1 per share threshold the company needs to maintain to stay listed on the public stock markets.