Revamped MoviePass Goes Nationwide

As promised, MoviePass returns. After the Labor Day beta/waitlist launch last year, the movie subscription service is open to everyone in the US just ahead of the Memorial Day holiday. After years of checkered history, the company promised to get back on track with a more measured approach to access to new movies, following the free-for-all that was MoviePass 1.0.

“By opening MoviePass to moviegoers nationwide, we’re expanding our support for the movie industry by helping drive traffic to all theaters during the critical summer season,” said 1.0 Co-Founder and 2.0 CEO Stacy Spikes, in a prepared statement. “Our newly designed service gives our members greater choice and flexibility in how they use their monthly credits, while continuing to encourage them to watch movies in theaters.”

The service is launching across the US with four tiers that start at $10 per month – the effective price of a streaming service. This basic tier gets you one to three movies per month. If you really, really like new movies and have plenty of free time, a $40 Pro account will get 30 movies a month — at or near one movie a day, depending on the month. The company says its $20 tier is the most popular of the bunch, trending for three to seven months.

Things are a little complicated, in terms of how many movies you can actually see, per pass, as the levels are actually “credits” based. The number of credits per movie depends on when you see it. Tuesdays use the least, followed by weekday mornings, weekday evenings, weekend evenings and opening weekends at the top of the list.

The good news, however, is that credits carry over if you don’t use them all in a month. According to the company, “You can have up to a maximum of two months of unused credits in your account at any time. For example, if your plan is 34 credits per month, you can have up to 68 credits in your account. .”

Considering everything that happened with the original version of the service, some consumers may – understandably – be a little wary. Opening things up for Memorial Day is definitely a great way to build service strength.