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The premiere of the rebranded streaming channel Hallmark+ is happening soon. That includes the new Tamera Mowry-Housley series VIP Movie Pass.

What is this new series about? Here is the most recent information.

Photo: Tamera Mowry-Housley Credit: ©2023 Hallmark Media What Is Hallmark+ Series VIP Movie Pass About?

Hallmark+ is officially launching in September. Along with that are new non-scripted series. That includes Tamera Mowry-Housley hosting the new series VIP Movie Pass. What is this series about?

According to Deadline, this features “stars of favorite Hallmark movies who share behind-the-scenes stories, personal anecdotes and participate in fun activities, trivia, and games. Ten of Hallmark’s beloved films are spotlighted including Blind Date Book Club, Branching Out, The Wedding Veil, Curious Caterer: Fatal Vows, The Professional Bridesmaid, Girlfriendship, Notes Of Autumn, Haul Out The Holly, My Christmas Family Tree, and The Gift Of Peace.

That means fans should expect to see such stars as Erin Krakow,...

MoviePass, the movie subscription service, has received a new equity investment from Comcast’s Forecast Labs.

The investment from Forecast Labs, which is the consumer venture group within Comcast NBCUniversal, will be used for TV advertising to drive new customer acquisition for MoviePass. The financial terms of the investment were not disclosed.

The news comes as MoviePass claims it hit its first profitable year in the company’s history, in 2023, after filing for bankruptcy in 2020. After initially launching in 2011, the service lowered its price to $9.95 a month in 2017, as Helios and Matheson bought a majority stake in the company and took control.

The subscription allowed members to see one film per day, and caused a surge in popularity, before the lopsided economics of the prospect caused the service to file for bankruptcy.

The service was reacquired by its co-founder Stacy Spikes in 2021. Its trajectory was the subject of the HBO documentary MoviePass,...

Nach dem Konkurs im Jahr 2020 konnte die Kinoabo-Plattform MoviePass im vergangenen Jahr das erste profitable Jahr seiner Firmengeschichte. Jetzt kommt eine zusätzliche Finanzspritze von der zu Comcast gehörenden Forecast-Labs-Gruppe.

Die zur Comcast gehörende Forecast-Labs-Gruppe hat in MoviePass investiert (Credit: Imago / Depositphotos)

Die Kinoabo-Plattform MoviePass gerät nach einem Chapter-11-Verfahren im Jahr 2020 immer mehr in ruhigeres Fahrwasser. Nachdem das Unternehmen, das zu einem monatlichen Fixpreis die Möglichkeit bietet, ein Kinoticket am Tag zu erwerben, im Februar bekannt gegeben hatte, dass man auf das erste profitable Jahr seiner Firmengeschichte zurückblicke, hat die zu Comcast gehörende Forecast-Labs-Gruppe eine Investition angekündigt. Angaben über deren Höhe machte MoviePass einem Bericht des US-Branchenblatts „Variety“ zufolge nicht. Teil des Investments des auf Kundenakquise spezialisierten Unternehmens sei es jedoch, MoviePass via TV-Werbung neue Abonnenten zu verschaffen.

Gegenüber „Variety“ erklärte MoviePass-Mitbegründerin Stacy Spikes, die die Plattform 2022 übernommen hatte, nachdem sie das Unternehmen 2017 nach der Übernahme durch Helios and Matheson Analytics verlassen hatte,...

A lot of people have reached out to Hamet Watt after watching HBO’s “MoviePass, MovieCrash.” Some have congratulated him on having his journey told through the film, while others have offered condolences after learning how things really went down at the company.

The MoviePass co-founder isn’t dwelling on the negative, though. “I don’t feel like a victim,” Watt tells Variety. “I feel like we learned a lot. We went through a lot, but it’s just part of the journey of business. Overall, I’d say it feels net positive.”

Now, Watt is just focused on what’s next — and using those hard-earned MoviePass lessons as the foundation for his new project, Share Ventures.

The venture studio’s mission is to build companies that challenge conventional thinking in the longevity and human performance space. The firm leverages frontier technologies, particularly artificial intelligence and a proprietary innovation framework,...

Experiencing movies in theaters is one of the most pristine feelings ever, something that can never be recreated by alternatives, irrespective of technological advancements. However, with the advent and popularity of Ott and streaming service-based entertainment in the last decade, a significant portion of the population turned their back on theaters. This marked a drastic decline in the number of moviegoers, and its impact was noticeable with the shutting down of several movie theaters. In 2011, the subscription-based movie-viewing service, Moviepass, was launched, which had the potential to revolutionize the theater business in a massive way, and to some extent, it managed to do so for a certain period of time. But a series of instances of mismanagement led to the service’s downfall, which is duly chronicled in HBO’s documentary Moviepass, Moviecrash, directed by Muta’Ali.

In a taut, detailed, and methodical way, the documentary delineates the events that...

Each week we highlight the noteworthy titles that have recently hit streaming platforms in the United States. Check out this week’s selections below and past round-ups here.

The Boys in the Boat (George Clooney)

This is, from start to finish, an underdog sports picture. Edgerton puts a welcome spin on the gruff-but-caring coach archetype, and Turner does the same with his lead character. Soft-spoken, stern, and handsome, this is a role someone like Ronald Reagan would have excelled at bringing to the screen some 80 years ago; Turner, luckily, is more interesting to look at and a better actor. Alexandre Desplat’s score is maybe the most playful thing about this film, and it works when it needs to. The race sequences are unquestionably Boys‘ highlight, Clooney making use of zoom lenses and well-placed cameras to capture the speed and fluidity of each competition. There is a real tension mined in these scenes,...

The HBO Original documentary Moviepass, Moviecrash, directed by award-winning filmmaker Muta’Ali (HBO’s “Yusuf Hawkins: Storm Over Brooklyn”), is streaming now on Max. For Movie Geeks, it was the greatest thing to own and you could see your favorite films an unseemly amount of times. But there’s more to the story.

MoviePass was a movie lover’s dream, offering access to movie theater tickets at a discounted monthly subscription rate. In 2017, with a “too good to be true” promotional deal of $9.95 a month, subscriptions exploded, the company’s stock soared, and investors rushed to get in on the venture. However, the co-founders, who had built the pop culture phenomenon from scratch, were cast aside and forced to watch from the sidelines as new executives seized control.

In a span of eight years, MoviePass went from being the fastest growing subscription service since Spotify to total bankruptcy, losing over $150 million in 2017 alone.

Late in HBO’s MoviePass, MovieCrash documentary, one of the talking heads — a smarmy vulture capitalist who gets way too much glee from describing the downfall of less-savvy vultures — quips that former MoviePass executive Ted Farnsworth is a con artist who had no intention of finding a business model for the once-beloved movie ticket subscription platform that actually made sense. Instead, the smarmy man says, he was putting on a Broadway play, with stocks in place of tickets, with everything about MoviePass being done in the service of the show.

“MoviePass, MovieCrash” offers a closer look at the rapid growth of the movie theater ticket subscription service. After taking off and winning the hearts of moviegoers, MoviePass quickly came crashing to the ground. In the new Max documentary, viewers will discover how MoviePass started and why everyone loved it before revealing the details of the huge crash that ended it all. “MoviePass, MovieCrash” begins streaming on Max on Wednesday, May 29. You can watch with a subscription to Max.

How to Watch 'MoviePass, MovieCrash' When: Wednesday, May 29, 2024 Where: Max Stream: Watch with a subscription to Max. Sign Up$9.99+ / month Max.com About 'MoviePass, MovieCrash'

“MoviePass, MovieCrash” highlights the innovative idea of a movie theater subscription service. Members would pay a small fee per month to gain access to discounted movie tickets. At one point, the promotional monthly cost was only $9.95, which created a major spike in subscription numbers.

“There’s a wonderful thing that happened when MoviePass went away.”

It’s an odd thing for the founder of MoviePass to say, but Stacy Spikes told IndieWire as much. That’s because in the wake of the spectacular crash and burn of his subscription movie-ticketing company, numerous copycats and in-house loyalty programs quickly tried to re-create what Spikes built.

“You had a lot of people introduced to subscription models, [which] validated that subscription models work, and that consumers like them,” Spikes said.

After MoviePass shuttered in 2019 — then under the leadership of Mitch Lowe and Ted Farnsworth after Spikes had been pushed out in 2017 — Spikes re-acquired the MoviePass brand in an auction and relaunched the company in 2022, hoping to build back his baby’s name after the former CEOs caused so much ill will.

Less than two years later, Spikes has achieved something the company never did before — especially not when...

A new documentary looks back at the discount moviegoing subscription model that went from industry disruptor to joke

Cinephiles talk about the “MoviePass summer” with the same wistful nostalgia as hippies recalling the Summer of Love, like it’s an impossible dream so utopian that it might have been a collective hallucination.

In August 2017, the startup MoviePass – a company conceived to sell subscriptions under which users paid a monthly fee in exchange for movie tickets – announced a radical new pricing structure offering one admission a day for a paltry $9.95 each month. Moviegoers immediately realized that the service would pay for itself within a single use, and use it they did; attendance soared, particularly in metropolitan markets with robust repertory scenes, where obsessives enthusiastically accepted the implicit challenge to go to the pictures every day. One afternoon, to kill a few hours between appointments in Manhattan, I checked into a multiplex...

Welcome to Creators on the Rise, where we find and profile breakout creators who are in the midst of extraordinary growth. You can check out previous installments here.

Misha Brown almost got eaten by a walrus in Antarctica.

But it’s fine. Totally fine. He survived. (Barely.)

And because he survived, he’s now around to tell us all about the world’s biggest flops.

Let’s back up a second, though. The reason he was in Antarctica in the first place is because, pre-pandemic, he spent a lot of time working as a performer on cruise ships. The schedule was brutal–contracts often last several months, and as Brown puts it, that means staffers both “live and work at work” with extremely tight schedules and multiple daily performances. Despite that, he enjoyed it. He’d always been into musical theater, and spent the 13 years before Covid onstage.

Then, of course,...

It's not that theaters are in danger of going away in the immediate future, but the movie business is in a bit of a crisis. Thanks to the pandemic, the box office has struggled to get back to the level of ticket sales the industry had become accustomed to. The SAG and WGA strikes last year have put us in a situation where the 2024 box office is in rough shape thus far, with the summer now burdened by unreasonable expectations. So, what can be done? One Hollywood executive believes he has the answer: Make the experience of going to the movies cheaper.

Sony Motion Pictures Group chairman Tom Rothman recently sat down to speak with Deadline. As the head of one of Hollywood's biggest studios -- one that doesn't have a streaming service and is very reliant on box office -- he has a good vantage point to comment on these matters.

Photograph by Courtesy of HBO Get ready to watch the wildest movie industry saga since The Disaster Artist! HBO’s new documentary, MoviePass, MovieCrash, premiering May 29th, dives deep into the spectacular rise and fall of MoviePass – that beloved (and then not-so-beloved) movie subscription service. Recall those wonderful times when cinema tickets were inexpensive and available in excess. Yeah, unfortunately, the dream suddenly became a nightmare. This documentary provides us with an inside look at how MoviePass went from being a hero to a zero in a matter of years as a result of a poisonous combination of corporate avarice, dubious business dealings, and wasteful spending. This documentary is a must-see, regardless of interest level. It offers an insightful look at the darker sides of the film industry in addition to telling a gripping story of ambition gone wrong.

Put May 29th on your calendars and get ready for another exhilarating MoviePass journey.

Remember the glory days of 2018 moviegoing? Those with MoviePass can now relive the rise and fall of the company that offered customers a subscription service to watch one movie a day for the price of just $9.95 a month with a new documentary. MoviePass, MovieCrash, which premiered at SXSW, now has its first trailer ahead of an HBO and Max debut at the end of the month.

Company co-founder Stacy Spikes was interviewed by John Fink for The Film Stage on the subject of the company’s relaunch after their business model proved unsustainable, the state of the movie industry today, and his memoir Black Founder. In his review of MoviePass, MovieCrash, Fink recommends Spikes’ book as an alternative to the film, which he calls “a detailed overview that is at times a little too dry to find the irony and injustice at the core of this story.”

Here’s the...

"All of this was part of a bigger story." Hob has revealed an official trailer for a documentary film titled MoviePass, MovieCrash, another of these "rise and fall" business stories, this one about something that really hits close to home. MoviePass was a movie lover's dream, offering access to movie theater tickets at a discounted monthly subscription rate when it launched in 2017. However, the co-founders, who had built the pop culture phenomenon from scratch, were cast aside and forced to watch from the sidelines as new executives seized control. Produced by Mark Wahlberg, the doc film follows the meteoric rise and stranger-than-fiction implosion of theatrical movie subscription service MoviePass, and how they crashed & burned. This doc profiles all of "the key players who, in peddling a false narrative and seeking to fly too high, created a wild ride that ended with hundreds of millions of dollars in lost value and...

The MoviePass moment was an extraordinary one. Between 2017 and 2018, the company offered a service that granted subscribers admission to one theatrical movie per day for $9.95 per month. At the time, it felt too good to be true, because the business model seemed like it made no sense. And it didn’t – the service flamed out in spectacular fashion by 2019 after burning through hundreds of millions of dollars.

The story of MoviePass’ dramatic rise and fall is the subject of “MoviePass, MovieCrash,” a new documentary that premieres on HBO and Max on May 29.

HBO released a trailer for the documentary today, which promises a “Fyre Fraud”-style look at what went wrong. It’s a story of hubris, excess, and betrayal, and as a moviegoer, it will make you nostalgic for a moment in the relatively recent past that feels so long gone but was so fun while it was happening.

The rise and fall of theater subscription service MoviePass is captured in new HBO documentary “MoviePass, MovieCrash.”

Dubbed “the Netflix of the movie theater” in the trailer, MoviePass was founded by Stacy Spikes and Hamet Watt in 2011 before former CEOs Mitch Lowe and Ted Farnsworth allegedly utilized fraudulent business tactics; the duo were charged by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) in a 2022 lawsuit. The lawsuit additionally named ex-MoviePass Vice President Khalid Itum as a defendant, with Itum being accused of submitting false invoices for the company.

MoviePass filed for bankruptcy in 2020 after launching a $9.99 per month subscription in 2017 allowing people to see a movie a day. Upon moving to the $9.99 one movie per day model, subscriptions went from 20,000 to 100,000 users within two days, ultimately capping at more than 3 million subscribers in 2018. Yet the company still lost more than $150 million in 2017 alone. MoviePass filed for bankruptcy in 2019.

The company later...

On paper, it was too good to be true: a theatrical movie subscription service that offers a movie ticket every day for $9.99 a month. But in 2017, MoviePass was a dream come true for moviegoers, with subscribers flocking, stocks rising, and investors trying to get in on the action. By 2019, however, the party was over, and MoviePass went from one of the world’s buzziest companies to a costly corporate misfire.

Read More: The 100 Most Anticipated Films Of 2024

“MoviePass, MovieCrash,” a new documentary from HBO, details the company’s rise and fall in unflinching detail. It’s all here: details about the original vision for MoviePass, its co-founders ousting by new execs who partied hard at Sundance and Cannes as the company sank, and how much value was lost as the company met a swift demise.

Continue reading ‘MoviePass, MovieCrash’ Trailer: HBO’s Doc About The Rise & Fall Of Infamous Theatrical...

With its list of new releases for May 2024, HBO streamer Max is bringing back one of the best comedies on television.

Hacks season 3 premieres on May 2 and will continue the tortured (platonic-ish) love affair between comedy superstar Deborah Vance (Jean Smart) and her former joke writer Ava Daniels (Hannah Einbinder). That will be followed up by Pretty Little Liars: Summer School on May 9.

Movie-lovers have more than enough to keep them occupied in May 2024 as well. The latest John Green adaptation, Turtles All the Way Down, will premiere on May 3. That will be followed by intriguing original documentary MoviePass, MovieCrash on May 30. Max is also putting its Warner Bros. origins to good use with a bunch of excellent library movies like The Iron Claw on May 10 and Batman V Superman: Dawn of Justice on May 26.

Here’s everything coming to HBO and Max in May.

New on HBO and Max...

Warner Bros. Discovery has announced the movies, TV shows, and live sports that will be available on the Max streaming service in May. The Max May 2024 lineup includes season three of the comedy series Hacks, the drama series Pretty Little Liars: Summer School, and the unscripted series Thirst with Shay Mitchell.

The May schedule also includes the comedy special Nikki Glaser: Someday You’ll Die, as well as the original documentaries Stax: Soulsville, U.S.A. and MoviePass, MovieCrash. Turtles All the Way Down, Stop Making Sense, and The Iron Claw are some of the films coming to the service.

Featured Programming

Hacks Season 3 (Max Original Comedy Series)

The nine-episode season debuts with two episodes on May 2, followed by two new episodes each week, concluding with the season finale on May 30.

Logline: A year after parting, Deborah Vance (Jean Smart) is riding high off the success of her standup special...

If you were there, you remember. 2018 was the summer of MoviePass, a glorious period in cinema history where millions said “why not” and took a chance to see nearly any movie thanks to the revolutionary subscription platform.

Switching to an unsustainable $10 a month, MoviePass went from being a niche program for movie fans to the hottest subscription program around. Offering users the chance to see a movie a day at nearly any theater in the country, it was, of course, too good to be true––especially when one ticket in New York City could be as much as $17.

The rise and fall of MoviePass is chronicled in the new HBO documentary MoviePass, MovieCrash, which recently premiered at SXSW, and in co-founder Stacy Spikes’ book Black Founder. Spikes was forced out of the company he co-founded with Hamet Watt by the infamous duo of Mitch Lowe and Ted Farnsworth after questionable...

Exclusive: Former USC football-turned convicted global drug kingpin, Owen Hanson, has been released early from a federal prison term of 21 years, and is on his way to transitional housing in Long Beach, CA, Deadline has learned per his attorney Mark F. Adams. Hanson is the subject of an Amazon Sports docuseries that’s being produced by Mark Wahlberg’s Unrealistic Ideas, which Deadline first told you about. Hanson’s release, which becomes official in June 26, 2025, should make for great fodder for this docuseries directed by Jody McVeigh-Schultz, and produced by Adam Ridley, Wahlberg, Stephen Levinson and Archie Gips’ Unrealistic Ideas.

Hanson was sentenced in late 2017 after being in arrested in September 2015. He’s served slightly less than seven years in a federal prison located in Englewood, Co.

Hanson’s drug-dealing career boomed from selling recreational drugs and steroids to teammates in college during the early aughts to an empire that spanned U.

SXSW 2024 is in the books, and we have a ton of coverage for you here at /Film.com. But if you're pressed for time and don't have enough hours of the day to fully immerse yourself in all the write-ups of the panels and screenings we attended, we've got you covered.

From sasquatches to stunt men, civil wars to rom-coms, from remakes to inventive documentaries, here's a list of every movie we reviewed at this year's festival, in alphabetical order.

Read more: Here's Why Movie Dialogue Has Gotten More Difficult To Understand (And Three Ways To Fix It)

Babes

Pamela Adlon is no stranger to direct portrayals of the Stuff We Don't Talk About, which she chronicled in her acclaimed FX series "Better Things." She brings that bluntness to this film, her feature debut, but there's a second voice at work here: a disarming shot of gonzo millennial dorkiness that's chaotic,...

It is possible that one day an excellent narrative feature in the vein of The Big Short, BlackBerry, Dumb Money or Margin Call will be made about MoviePass, a company built––and destroyed––by several larger-than-life figures. For now, we have Muta’Ali’s documentary MoviePass, MovieCrash, which provides a broad overview of the deal everyone knew was too good to be true: a company that, for about a year, was so obsessed with subscriber growth that they offered customers the chance to see one movie per day for only $9.95 month.

Inspired by a series of Business Insider articles, MoviePass, MovieCrash features interviews with the company’s founders Stacy Spikes and Hamet Watt along with other company––insiders including Mitch Lowe, the man who would ultimately take Spikes’ position. In a bit of good luck, Muta’Ali gets the interview with Lowe just weeks before he’s indicted on securities fraud alongside Ted Farnsworth,...

Few questions have loomed larger over the film industry since the pandemic than “How do we save movie theaters?” The streaming boom kept us entertained through years of isolation and provided media companies with a massive influx of content, but no business model has come close to offering the potential profitability and cultural impact of old fashioned theatrical releases. Cultural phenomenons like “Barbie” and “Oppenheimer” have proven that there’s still a large market for great theatrical movies, but some of the country’s top theater and marketing executives stress that one-off successes haven’t solved the industry’s deeper problems.

“All of our businesses are in the attention business and we’re fighting for people’s leisure time. There’s TikTok and there’s gaming and there’s this and there’s that, but the magic word is habit,” MoviePass CEO Stacy Spikes said on stage at SXSW on Saturday,...

If you're a movie lover -- specifically someone who loves going to the movies -- there's a more-than-decent chance that you got sucked into a MoviePass subscription at some point between 2015 and 2018. At one point, it was a deal that seemed too good to be true. Unlimited movies, all for as low as $10 per month depending on where you live in the country. Either way, it represented insane value for moviegoers and felt like a real moment of change in the industry. Then, it all flamed out in spectacular fashion in the summer of 2018.

MoviePass lost tens of millions of dollars. The business model was called into question, and its parent company ultimately had to file for bankruptcy. It was a disaster of epic proportions. But, it turns out, most of us aren't even aware of just how bad it was behind the scenes. A new documentary is here to...

Say this for Mitch Lowe, the former CEO of MoviePass: He may have helped destroy a briefly beloved brand and he may be awaiting trial on fraud charges stemming from that destruction, but he sat down for interviews for Muta’Ali’s upcoming HBO documentary MoviePass, MovieCrash and he gives what might be my favorite quote illustrating the true nature of capitalism.

Discussing the wave of out-of-control spending and public exuberance that preceded MoviePass’ fall — MoviePass-branded helicopters were landing at Coachella and Dennis Rodman was being trotted out in red hats while the offices were running out of supplies and seven customer service reps were handling countless complaints — Lowe says, without any evident self-awareness: “I sensed a resentment by the MoviePass employees. Each individual has their various roles and not all roles get to party.”

“Not all roles get to party.”

Man, that’s good.

As for MoviePass, MovieCrash?...

MoviePass CEO Stacey Spikes said the service may give users buying tickets on the app the option of watching a bucket of commercials in exchange for credits they can cash in for movie tickets.

Spikes – who relaunched the company out of bankruptcy in 2022 – wants to start a beta trial this coming summer. He spoke at SXSW after the premiere of the Muta’Ali directed documentary MoviePass, MovieCrash earlier today. Spikes co-founded the company, which was then acquired by Ted Farnsworth and Mitch Lowe. They ejected him and ran it into the ground with too-good-to-be-true ticket offers. Shareholders in MoviePass’ parent Helios + Matheson were wiped out when it filed for Chapter 11. Lowe and Farnsworth have been sued for fraud by the SEC.

MoviePass was reborn in the fall of 2022 and currently has three — more responsible — tiers that include movies as well as credits that can be used towards purchases.

In conversation...