Since Hollywood didn’t bother to release any new wide openers last weekend, I gave the box office folks the weekend off. We’ll be back next weekend to discuss how well Bad Boys Ride or Die debuted and how little general audiences cared about the whole “Will Smith slaps Chris Rock at the Oscars” thing. In the meantime, and this may be a backdoor pilot of sorts for a second semi-regular podcast, I spoke last week with Business Insider’s longtime entertainment correspondent Jason Guerrasio.
His as-it-happened reporting was essential in exposing the less-than-glittery gold that was the year of MoviePass. He’s an executive producer on the new HBO/Max documentary Movie Pass, Movie Crash, which charts how an under-the-radar but viable business was taken over and thrust into the spotlight by offering free movies not for the previous $40-$90 per month but for $10 a pop. The documentary shows in grim detail how that unraveled over the course of a year (from August 2017 to around August 2018) as the new owners ignored the pleas of the (eventually forced out) founders (Stacy Spikes and Hamet Watt). underestimated (or disregarded) the demand but refused to readjust, thanks to theoretical notions that the mere appearance of success and strength would eventually move the chess pieces in their favor.
If this seems like a prelude to the 2020s streaming era, where viable rate-of-return and transactional entertainment products were undercut by “This will be profitable eventually, somehow” streaming platforms, well, yeah. We talked about what happened, why it happened, how it does or doesn’t compare to the sad fates of Toys R Us and Red Lobster, what was merely unethical as opposed to outright illegal and what the momentary success of MoviePass showed about the potential for theatrical rejuvenation.
Whether it becomes its own series or just becomes “bonus episodes” for The Box Office Podcast, I do have a few more of these unofficially lined up over the next month if time allows. In the meantime, do the sharing/comment/subscribe thing. Fear not. Jeremy, Lisa and Ryan will be back next week for the usual punditry.
Ep 18: Talking MoviePass, MovieCrash with Business Insider's Jason Guerrasio