Regal Cinemas is reportedly launching an unlimited movie-ticket subscription plan this month
- Regal Cinemas will unveil its movie-ticket subscription plan, Regal Unlimited, by the end of July, according to Deadline.
- Though details are not final, the tiered pricing could range from $18, to $21, to $24 per month, according to the trade.
- The top tier will get you access to any Regal theater in the US. The lowest will get you into about half. And if you don't pay for the top tier, and go to a Regal out of your network, you will be charged an added fee.
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Regal Cinemas, the second-largest movie theater chain in the US, is getting into the movie-ticket subscription game.
The company is preparing to launch a three-tier unlimited plan called Regal Unlimited by the end of the month, according to Deadline. The trade reports that details are still getting worked out, but that the chain is looking at tiered pricing ranging from $18, to $21, to $24 per month, which will be based on access to specific theater locations (not the broader region of the country where you reside, which AMC's A-List and others base their pricing on).
That means if you pay the top tier price, you will get access to any Regal in the US. The lowest will get you access to about half of the chain's theaters. If you don't have the top tier plan, and visit a Regal theater out of your network, you will be charged an added fee. It's not final, but that fee could range between $2 and $3, according to Deadline.
The trade is also reporting that it's possible subscribers will not have the option to pay monthly, but instead annually for the plans, which would come out to $288 for the top tier, $252 for the middle, and $216 for the lowest.
Regal was not immediately available to comment to Business Insider.
Regal has been methodical in its launch of a subscription service, as it's the last of the big three movie chains in the country to start one. Outside of getting the necessary blessings from the Hollywood studios (which takes time), Regal's parent company, Cineworld (the second-largest chain in the world), has taken the decade-long experience of doing subscription plans with its Cineworld Unlimited in other areas of the world to shape how it wants Regal to tackle the trend in the US.
Cinemark, with its Cinemark Movie Club, was the first of the big three to come out with a plan. It is the most modest, as for $8.99 a month you get one standard-format ticket, a 20% discount on concessions, and no fees if you order tickets online. AMC's Stubs A-List costs $19.95 a month (or $21.95, or $23.95 in various regions of the country) and lets you see three movies per week. The popularity of the service, which has snagged more than 860,000 subscribers in a year's time, has helped fuel its Stubs rewards program to be used by over 50 million people. And by the end of the year, Alamo Drafthouse will launch its subscription plan, Season Pass. (The beta version of the service will be available when the chain opens its first Los Angeles location this month.)
The trailblazer of the movie-ticket subscription craze in the US, MoviePass, is still kicking though its fall has been dramatic. Business Insider reported in April that subscription numbers for the service has dropped from over 3 million to about 225,000, according to leaked internal data. Its current "Uncapped" plan puts no restrictions on the number of 2D movies subscribers can see. There is a catch, however: MoviePass can throttle a subscriber's access at its discretion.