Good news for the trombone player that now just follows subscription movie ticket service MoviePass around everywhere, “womp-wahh”-ing whenever something bad happens to it: New York’s attorney general’s office has announced that it’s now investigating the service’s parent company, over allegations that it might have lied to investors to present itself as more healthy than it actually was.
This is per The Hollywood Reporter, which notes that Helios and Matheson Analytics—which bought MoviePass back in 2017, at the same time the service announced that it was going to start functionally selling movie tickets for way less than they cost to buy—may have an even worse relationship with basic math than we already thought. The company (which is also being sued by its shareholders) has seen its stock tank twice in the last year, as confidence in MoviePass’ “buy high, sell low” business model has faltered considerably. (The first time the stock price hit “pennies,” the company engineered a consolidation designed to raise prices; then they dropped back to zilch again.) Per THR, the company has lost “more than 99 percent” of its value over the last year and a half, which is, not to be judgey, a fucking lot of percents to lose.
MoviePass users have seen the service’s functionality dip quite a bit over that same period, cutting back from the free lunch of basically unlimited movies to a handful of selected titles every week.