• by P.J. Bednarski  @pjbtweet, April 6, 2018

MoviePass, the unusual ticket-buying website that offers a subscription at a price that seems far too good to be sustained, is linking with Flix Brewhouse theaters, which claims to be “the world’s only first-run cinema-eatery-microbrewery.” 

A  MoviePass subscription lets a user see one movie a day for every day of the month for just $9.95 a month. The company says the cards are accepted at 91% of all cinemas in the country. 

MoviePass works like a debit card. When a customer uses it, the full admission price at any cinema is added to the card, and automatically subtracted and paid to the theater when it’s swiped by the ticket taker. As a transaction, it is a sure money loser for MoviePass, and a plus for theaters, which get the full value of a regularly-priced ticket. Mostly, MoviePass gets to keep a growing pile of consumer data.

MoviePass claims its customers on average spend 123% more on concessions than they would if they had paid full price.   

That could have been an inducement for Flix Brewhouse, whose claim to fame is its on-site microbreweries, a food menu and the film. It has locations in Albuquerque, N.M., Des Moines, Iowa, and Chandler, Ariz., with others planned for suburban Phoenix and soon-to-open theaters in Dallas and Madison, Wisc. It also has locations in Little Elm and Round Rock, Texas, where Flix has its headquarters. The company recently closed a $26 million equity funding round, which it expects will fuel growth to 11 locations and 95 screens by the end of 2019.

AMC, the largest multiplex operator, earlier argued that, eventually, MoviePass will fail and further alienate movie-goers, who don’t need many more pushes. Film attendance dropped to its lowest level in 22 years in 2017. But the chain, which stopped accepting MoviePass at 10 of its top locations, changed it mind a couple days ago as MoviePass, which now claims two million subscribers, continues to grow. AMC, it’s been speculated, could start its own similar membership deal. 

When it started, MoviePass cost $30 a month, then $15, then $9.95, though sometimes that price is discounted, too. That sounds impossible to sustain. But there’s firepower behind the name. Its CEO is Mitch Lowe, an early executive at Netflix and formerly the president of Redbox. Both of those movie services shook up the industry. Lowe told Filmslash.com last month that he expects MoviePass will have five million subs by the end of 2018.

MoviePass hopes to make money down the road. The hoped-for payoff is the strategy of majority owner Helios and Matheson Analytics, a NASDAQ-traded information and technology solutions company. It focuses on big data, social data, business intelligence and consumer technology. MoviePass is positioned to collect a lot of it.

MoviePass also acquired the old Moviefone service from Verizon on Thursday, for $22 million. The acquisition allows MoviePass to pick up Moviefone's consumer base and connect movie marketers who are familiar with the old brand.