MoviePass says it drove nearly 20% of tickets sold for some movies in the US during its height, according to its internal data

• MoviePass says it drove nearly 20% of tickets sold for some movies in 2018.
• Internal MoviePass data, which was shared with Insider, says the company was responsible for 4% of the nationwide market share across all movie titles that year.

The movie-ticket-subscription company MoviePass is working on a relaunch and hopes its internal data will convince both movie theaters and Hollywood they need its services now more than ever.

At the height of the company's popularity back in 2018 — when the service dramatically lowered its monthly subscription price to $10 to see one movie a day in theaters — MoviePass brought in nearly 20% of tickets sold to some of the most popular independent film titles released in the US at the time, according to internal data MoviePass cofounder and CEO Stacy Spikes will show at a relaunch event in New York City on Thursday, and which was shared with Insider.

MoviePass compared internal ticket-sales data with overall box-office data from the tracking website The Numbers to get the figures. MoviePass says its analysis concluded the company was responsible for 4% of the nationwide market share across all movie titles in 2018. That means if you compare it to movie exhibitors, MoviePass would have ranked fifth nationwide in that space — if the data is accurate. Insider could not independently verify the figures.

Where MoviePass found its biggest impact was among the independent films and award season contenders that year.

MoviePass says its biggest contribution in 2018 was for the movie "Sorry to Bother You," which starred LaKeith Stanfield and Tessa Thompson. MoviePass' internal data indicates it was responsible for 19.40% of the nationwide tickets sold.

The second-highest percentage of nationwide tickets sold by MoviePass in 2018 was for the Natalie Portman sci-fi thriller "Annihilation," with 18.30% of the total, according to the internal data.

And in New York, MoviePass says that at one theater it was responsible for 55% of the tickets sold for the Mr. Rogers documentary "Won't You Be My Neighbor," according to the internal data.

Here's the top 10 breakdown of MoviePass' nationwide tickets sold in 2018, according to the internal data:

1. "Sorry to Bother You": 19.40%
2. "Annihilation": 18.30%
3. "Isle of Dogs": 15.30%
4. "Won't You Be My Neighbor": 13.80% (ranked No. 1 at one location in the NY market with 55%)
5. "Tag": 14%
6. "I, Tonya": 13%
7. "Hereditary": 12%
8. "Game Night": 12%
9. "Adrift": 11.80%
10. "Red Sparrow": 11.60%

"This is found money," the Comscore senior media analyst Paul Dergarabedian told Insider in reaction to the data. "I don't see a single franchise film on this list. It's a get out of jail free card for customers because it gives people no guilt in seeing movies they don't know if they will like or not."

"People like a sure thing when they go to the movies and pluck down their hard-earned cash, that's why the top movies of the year are littered with known IP, franchise films, safe bets," Dergarabedian continued. "MoviePass gives you the opportunity to partake in many different films."

Spikes founded MoviePass with Hamet Watt in 2011, creating a service that let moviegoers see a certain number of movies a month in theaters for one monthly price. After struggling to stay afloat for years, in 2017 the company was bought by Helios and Matheson Analytics (HMNY).

Under the leadership of HMNY CEO Ted Farnsworth and new MoviePass CEO Mitch Lowe, the company launched a $10 a month subscription price to see a movie a day. Within two days, subscriptions went from about 20,000 to about 100,000. In less than a year, MoviePass had over 3 million subscribers.

But the price was unsustainable. With Farnsworth and Lowe at the helm, MoviePass blew through hundreds of millions of dollars, and Spikes — who said he'd raised concerns internally about the $10 price point — was fired in 2018.

HMNY was delisted from the Nasdaq in 2019 and both MoviePass and HMNY filed for bankruptcy in 2020. At the time of MoviePass' bankruptcy filing, it said it was under pending investigations by the FTC, SEC, four California district attorneys, and the New York attorney general.

This June, Farnsworth and Lowe settled with the FTC and reached a $400,000 settlement with the California district attorneys.

In November 2021, as Insider first reported, Spikes bought back the company after his bid was approved by a Southern District of New York bankruptcy court.

Spikes hopes to relaunch MoviePass this year.

Following MoviePass' rise in popularity, a slew of movie-ticket-subscription services launched to the public, including one from the world's largest theater chain, AMC Theatres.

Dergarabedian said it would be fascinating to watch if MoviePass could get back to having a strong presence in the space.

"Because there are exhibitors doing this on their own now I think it's going to be a different dynamic in how theater owners view this and studios will view this," he said of the MoviePass relaunch. "But I think everyone will agree that anything that can get more people in theaters, that's a really good thing."