MoviePass CEO announces in all-hands meeting that tickets to big upcoming movies will not be available on the app

Warner Bros.

"The Meg."

• In an all-hands meeting on Monday, MoviePass CEO Mitch Lowe announced that upcoming big releases like "Christopher Robin" and "The Meg" will not be available to subscribers, a source familiar with the matter told Business Insider.
• The implication was that the practice of not offering tickets to major releases would continue for the foreseeable future.

MoviePass subscribers were frustrated to find over the weekend that they couldn't order tickets through the app for the weekend's biggest release, "Mission: Impossible - Fallout," and it looks like going forward they will continue to be shut out of the major titles.

A source familiar with the company told Business Insider that during an all-hands meeting on Monday, MoviePass CEO Mitch Lowe revealed that the app would not make upcoming releases "Christopher Robin" and "The Meg" - the next two major releases hitting theaters in the next two weeks - available to its subscribers, and he implied the practice of not offering tickets to major movies would continue for the foreseeable future.

The company has fallen on incredibly hard times as it tries to find a financially feasible business model.

Last week, MoviePass' parent company, Helios and Matheson Analytics (HMNY), did a reverse stock split that boosted its stock from trading at $0.09 on Tuesday to around $14 on Wednesday. But the service temporarily shut down on Thursday night because it ran out of money, and according to an SEC filing on Friday, the company had to borrow $5 million in cash to get the service back on line.

Things didn't get any better going into the weekend as complaints on social media were rampant. The weekend's blockbuster release, "Mission: Impossible - Fallout," was blocked from all subscribers and the app had more technical issues again on Sunday.

Lowe's announcement to his staff that the big releases for the next two weeks would not be available on MoviePass came on the heels of his open letter on Friday, in which the CEO stated that, "As we continue to evolve the service, certain movies may not always be available in every theater on our platform." When reached for comment about this article, a MoviePass spokesperson referred Business Insider to the CEO's previous statement in the Friday letter.

Because MoviePass has to pay full ticket price for all the movies its subscribers go see, eliminating the major releases going forward means the cash-strapped company will pay millions less (up to mid-July, MoviePass paid over 1.15 million tickets for just "Avengers: Infinity War").

On Monday, the HMNY stock was trading back below $1.