MoviePass: Insane New $10-Per-Month Plan Buys You Daily Trips To The Movie Theater

NEW YORK, NY — The nation flipped its collective lid Tuesday upon getting wind of a rather unprecedented new deal from the NYC-based startup MoviePass, run by one of the guys who helped found Netflix. The deal was in fact so juicy — and the American people perhaps so desperate to distract themselves from the nonfiction horror show playing out in Charlottesville and Midtown — that by 4:20 p.m. Eastern Time (coincidence?), the MoviePass app and website had crashed from too much traffic.

The company's big reveal: For $9.95 per month, or the same price as a Netflix subscription (coincidence?), you can now catch one film screening at any movie theater in America — PER DAY.

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According to Bloomberg, "the fee will let customers get in to one showing every day at any theater in the U.S. that accepts debit cards." (Aka, one swipe within any given 24-hour period.) MoviePass will then "pay theaters the full price of each ticket used by subscribers, excluding 3D or Imax screens."

A monthly subscription to MoviePass used to cost between $15 and $50 per month, depending on where you lived and how expensive box office prices were in your town, the Verge reported.

All of which begs the question: How is one little cinephile startup going to pay for this?

The short, very 21st century answer: by tracking your tastes for targeted advertising.

And to offset the possibly catastrophic initial costs, MoviePass just sold a majority stake in the company to Helios and Matheson Analytics, a publicly traded NYC firm that invests in data-driven startups. This sale was announced almost simultaneously with the $9.95 plan — reportedly causing the firm's shares to rise 8 percent on Tuesday afternoon. (Coincidence? Oh, hell nah.)

More insight from Bloomberg:

Ted Farnsworth, chief executive officer at Helios and Matheson, said the goal is to amass a large base of customers and collect data on viewing behaviors. That information could then be used to eventually target advertisements or other marketing materials to subscribers. “It’s no different than Facebook or Google,” Farnsworth said. “The more we understand our fans, the more we can target them.”

So as long as you're cool with Big Data knowing how many crappy rom-coms you watch each month, go ahead and join the millions maniacally refreshing the MoviePass home page this week until it comes back online and allows the American public to do what it does best: save big and stare at screens.