Image: Sinemia
MoviePass competitor Sinemia appears to smell blood in the water.
Following MoviePass’s introduction of surge pricing and a Friday night outage, Sinemia is dropping the price of all of its theater subscription packages for the rest of the summer.
Sinemia has flown a little under the radar in the U.S. with its cheaper and more limited subscription service. It doesn’t have the bat-shit bonkers business model of MoviePass, and it doesn’t get itself into a lot of headline-generating drama. But it is gaining popularity, and the biggest trouble it’s encountered has been keeping up with demand. Rather than offer a movie a day for $9.95, as MoviePass does, Sinemia offers a few packages with that are still cheap, and on Thursday it dropped all of its prices by a dollar.
With a dollar off, here’s the rundown of what Sinemia’s packages cost until September 3:
- $3.99 per month – One ticket to any movie per month
- $6.99 per month – Two tickets to any movie per month
- $8.99 per month – Two tickets to any movie per month, including 3D, 4D, and IMAX formats
- $13.99 per month – Three tickets to any movie per month including 3D, 4D, IMAX formats
MoviePass is still an all-around better deal, but Sinemia has some perks. For one, it’s bottom-tier model is significantly cheaper if you only make it to a theater every once in a while. The top two tiers have optional 3D, 4D, and IMAX screenings, something that MoviePass doesn’t offer. Sinemia also has a family plan, something MoviePass is working on. The one catch with Sinemia is that you have to purchase a subscription for a full year. The bottom line is that either service is a good deal.
AMC Theatres also introduced a $20 per month service last month that’s worth your money if you don’t mind being restricted to one theater chain. And other chains are looking to get in on the subscription game.
Even if you’ve dealt with MoviePass’s shitty service—my inbox is full of these stories, I hear you—we have that company to thank for pushing this idea into the mainstream. So, let me make a suggestion: If you go to the movies a lot, get MoviePass and the cheapest Sinemia plan. That way, you have an extra ticket to bring a friend or a date when you need it, and you keep supporting these companies’ pushes to get a more reasonable pricing model at the cinema. The idea isn’t to price theaters out of business, it’s to get more butts in the seats buying popcorn so the whole thing doesn’t need to be so expensive.
If you decide to just go with Sinemia, the good news is, it seems to have a lot better chance of being around in a year.