As MoviePass continues to swirl the chemical-butter-clogged drain, unused passes to Gotti dribbling from its twitching form, other services have sprung up in an effort to succeed where the company failed—primarily in the all-important arena of “not losing shitloads of money.”
And in that respect, it appears that AMC’s new subscription service, Stubs A-List, might be winning the battle for the hearts and minds (and wallets) of American moviegoers. As we previously reported, the theater chain is hyping its plan—which allows customers to see up to three movies a week, including IMAX and 3D, for the costlier-than-MoviePass-but-still-low price of $19.95 a month—as the sustainable alternative. And it seems to be working: Variety reports that after only five weeks, more than 175,000 people have signed up for the service. Given AMC’s stated goal was to have 500,000 subscribers by June 2019 and a million by the following year, this puts them far ahead of the projected schedule.
True, they’ve got a long way to go before matching MoviePass’s numbers, which the company says are currently in excess of three million members. But at double the cost, AMC is already planning to maintain its service without relying on the advertising deals and cost-sharing hopes that never materialized for MoviePass. The number of people already participating in the theater chain’s Stubs rewards program is around 15.8 million, so even if only ten percent of them spring for the A-List service, that’s a lot of people going to see Sherlock Gnomes 2: Gnome For The Holidays or whatever come December.