If you are an avid moviegoer, there's a good chance you already know all about MoviePass, a service that has been around for quite some time but that recently dropped its prices to just $9.95 a month. This has obviously correlated to a rise in MoviePass use, much to some theaters' chagrin. However, now theater company Cinemark is going to try and compete with MoviePass, and the company certainly has a lot of theaters in which to do so.
According to Cinemark Holdings, the parent company of a slew of theater chains including Cinemark, Century Theaters, Tinseltown USA, CineArts and Rave Cinemas, moviegoers at these theaters will be able to purchase a Cinemark Movie Club pass. The good news? The pass will only cost you $8.99--which prices out MoviePass by a significant percentage of cost, although isn't a huge different in the total amount. The bad news? The new pass isn't as wide open as MoviePass' seems to be.
The Cinemark Movie Club pass is good for one 2D ticket per month. If you don't use your pass in a given month, the movie will roll over. Subsequent movies seen during the same month will only cost the subscriber $8.99, which is a good deal in some locations where movie tickets can reach up into the $15 plus range. There are also no online fees if you order tickets that way, and users will get 20% off of concessions each time they hit up a Cinemark Holdings-owned theater.
Theaters across the country have benefit cards giving out discounts on concessions and more, but the Cinemark Movie Club will also sort-of tie into MoviePass' audience. It's actually seemingly a better deal for the casual moviegoer, as you will get the benefit of rollover if you feel like skipping a movie one month, plus you will get the added concessions deal. However, it's unlike MoviePass in a lot of ways, too, as MoviePass allows people who would like to see numerous movies in a month do so at a low cost, although it recently changed its terms of service to cover its bases if you use the past too much. So if you are more of a casual moviegoer and have Cinemark Holdings theaters near you, the Cinemark Movie Club could be a pretty good deal.
The news is nearly the opposite response of other large theater chain AMC, which has attempted to stop the use of MoviePass in its theaters after the announcement that passes that used to be in the $30+ per month range had dropped to just under $10. Despite some theater resistance and some early snafus with getting passes to new users, business over at MoviePass is booming. The service has already added hundreds of thousands of subscribers and may jump over 3 million by next August. That's an estimate, but it still proves that demand for the pass is at a high. It looks like Cinemark sees the demand and is trying to get in on the game rather than lose out to its competitor. We'll let you know if other theater chains follow suit.
You can find out more about Cinemark over at its site. In addition, more about MoviePass and even its annual plan can be gleaned here.
