Movie ticket discount service MoviePass Inc. will now limit subscribers to three movies a month, rather than one movie a day.
The service also said Monday that it will keep its monthly rate at $9.95, rather than hiking prices to $14.95 a month, as it had previously planned to do. The changes to the subscription plan will go into effect Aug. 15.
MoviePass, which is owned by New York data firm Helios and Matheson Analytics Inc., said in a statement that only 15 percent of its subscribers had used the service to watch four or more movies a month, and that the new model will have "no impact whatsoever on over 85 percent of our subscribers."
Mitch Lowe, MoviePass' chief executive, said in a statement that the company was "well aware" that it has encountered "many challenges."
"However, any industry-wide disruption like MoviePass requires a tremendous amount of testing, pivoting, and learning," he said.
After subscribing to the service, customers receive a red debit card in the mail. When near a theater, they use an app to select a showtime, and the company loads the full price of the ticket onto the card for the customer to swipe at the box office.
MoviePass bet on what many view as a wildly flawed business model: It pays theaters the full price for each ticket its customers buy, intending to make money by selling consumer data. But major theater chains blasted the plan, calling it unrealistic, and have refused to share lucrative concession revenue. And the goal of selling consumer data to major studios and distributors hasn't panned out.
