MoviePass Claims They Accounted For 40% Of Ticket Sales To The Critically Savaged ‘Gotti’
MoviePass’s business strategy continues to confound all of us. The ticket-buying service’s sustainability has always been in question since it dropped its prices to the popular $10 a month, but MoviePass was not content to simply disrupt the moviegoing industry. It had to get behind the scenes as well. Cue the perplexing venture into distribution, of which MoviePass has seen some success and some failures. And the one big, public failure with the meager box office returns of Gotti, in particular, maybe even worse for MoviePass than we realized.
The service went into the distribution business early this year, co-acquiring films at film festivals includingAmerican Animalsat Sundance and John Travolta’s long-gestatingGottibiopic at Cinemacon. WhileAmerican Animalssawexciting successat the independent box office, scoring one of the highest per screen averages of the year with a $135K opening weekend, thecritically slaughteredGottiwas another story.
However, another independent studio boss says that the 40% share is “totally unverifiable.”
But that’s not so bad for MoviePass, right? So far, the MoviePass experiment of distribution has had a 50/50 success rate. But if you add that 40% on top of the money the company spent on acquiringGotti, MoviePass’s losses more than double.Pajibanotes that 40% of ticket sales would amount to about $668,000. Though we don’t know the exact numbers of MoviePass’s initial distribution deal forGotti, Pajiba estimates that MoviePass could have lost up to $3 million on the film.
MoviePasstook a low-seven-figure stakein the reported $10M budgeted feature when it screened at Cinemacon this year. Not only that, MoviePass acquiredGotti’sproduction company Emmett Furla Oasis Films in yet another radicalventure into movie production. It was either a massive vote of confidence in the movie or just another mystical part of MoviePass’sstrange business strategy.
It seems like that confidence may have been unearned.Gottiwas slaughtered by critics, earning the biopic therare 0% on Rotten Tomatoes, and ultimately flopped at the box office with a$1.6 million opening weekend haul.
