For many, MoviePass was an overnight sensation whose too-good-to-be-true monthly cost was a sign of its potential to revolutionize the theater industry. The promise of being able to see as many newly released movies as you wanted for less than the price of a regular ticket was intoxicating enough to convince much of the public that MoviePass had a game plan.
But there were a handful of people within the company who had long been sounding the alarm about its unsustainable growth. MoviePass, MovieCrash — director of Muta'Ali new HBO documentary – is a damning account of how MoviePass's C-suite executives were determined to ignore all the warning signs that led to its bankruptcy filing in 2020. And while the film plays into some of the same myths with The wide-eyed that ultimately doomed its disruptive theme to failure, lays bare how the pursuit of exponential profits can doom companies that seem to have everything going for them.
MoviePass, MovieCrash features interviews with a wide range of former employees, investors and analysts who speak candidly about how the company spent hundreds of millions of dollars in venture capital as it struggled to make its business model work. But the film begins with the origin story of Mitch Lowe, the founder of a regional video rental chain who worked his way up the entertainment industry to Netflix in the late '90s before becoming CEO of MoviePass in 2016.
While Lowe describes how his passion for cinema arose from watching Alfred Hitchcock's film in his childhood. Psychopath, you can hear traces of a boardroom show meant to convey seriousness. But MoviePass, MovieCrash uses clips from the 1960 horror classic to foreshadow how, somewhat like Norman Bates, Lowe would one day become infamous for running a business into ruin while drowning in a mess of his own making.
However, before the documentary delves into what went wrong, it focuses on the halcyon days of MoviePass, when the company was making headlines for being a new player ready to revolutionize the theatrical experience. In its first act, as the staff recounts their quest to raise more venture capital upon reaching 100,000 subscribers, MoviePass, MovieCrash presents 2016 as the most pivotal moment in MoviePass history, to the point that it almost seems like that's when the business started. But it's not until the film begins to unravel how that search put MoviePass on a downward spiral that MoviePass, MovieCrash begins to tell the much more interesting story of how two black men… Businesswoman Stacy Spikes. and Hamet Watt inverter – co-founded the company in 2011.
In news coverage of the rise and fall of MoviePass, Spikes and Watt's roles in the company were often downplayed. while Lowe was presented as the face of the company. Initially, MoviePass, MovieCrash It feels a little like he's playing into the self-aggrandizing narrative that Lowe put forward while making television appearances assuring the public of MoviePass' durability. But leading with Lowe, MoviePass, MovieCrash sets up Spikes and Watts to set the record straight on why they were kicked out and to explain how the origins of MoviePass were shaped by the Widespread refusal of the entertainment and technology industries to invest in and trust Black founders.
While time the documentary What happens with Lowe illustrates the resources given to white, male executives to move fast and break things, using Spikes and Watt to emphasize how much thought and care was put into creating MoviePass before it was taken away from them. Although they arrive a little later than they should, Spikes and Watt help. MoviePass, MovieCrash highlight how differently things could have developed if the long-term existence of the company had been prioritized over the desire for growing growth and profits.
If you followed the news in real time (which wasn't that long ago), most MoviePass, MovieCrash It will look familiar and remind you how loud the hype machine roared when flashy “innovative” tech startups could still afford to subsidize their offerings. But now we're much more in tune with the reality that C-suite executives will obsess over. the idea of numbers going up and at the same time setting fire to piles of cash. With this in mind, the decline of MoviePass is in no way surprising. But the document is detailed enough to turn even an all-too-common business story into something worth watching.
MoviePass, MovieCrash arrives on HBO on May 29.
