MoviePass Receives Investment from Comcast’s Forecast Labs (EXCLUSIVE)

MoviePass, a movie theater subscription service that emerged from bankruptcy with its original founders at the helm, has received an equity investment from Forecast Labs, a consumer company owned by Comcast. As part of the investment, Forecast Labs will acquire new customers for MoviePass through TV advertising. Comcast also owns and operates NBCUniversal. MoviePass has not disclosed financial details about the investment or its structure.

MoviePass recently announced that it was responsible for one million movies seen on its platform and also said that it had achieved the first profitable year in the company’s history. The service is recovering after a turbulent period in its history. MoviePass became a phenomenon after it introduced a $9.95 monthly membership plan in 2017 that seemed too good to be true. That was the problem for the agency, which couldn’t figure out a way to make it profitable and filed for Chapter 11 in 2020. About a year later, it was reacquired by co-founder Stacy Spikes. Spikes was ousted from the company he helped found shortly after selling a majority stake to Helios and Matheson, putting founder Ted Farnsworth and Mitch Lowe, a former Netflix and Redbox executive, in charge. The rise, fall, and re-emergence of MoviePass was recently the subject of an HBO documentary, “MoviePass, MovieCrash.”

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The company attributes much of its recent growth to improvements in artificial intelligence and machine learning that have optimized the service and allowed customers to more easily access cheaper impressions. In an interview with VarietySpikes said having a Comcast-backed company invest in MoviePass was a “great vote of confidence.”

“There was a meeting of the minds,” Spikes said. “They understand how important what we’re trying to do is for the film industry in terms of increasing attendance and making moviegoing more efficient. It is so exciting to see a major media company supporting our vision.”

MoviePass serves 3,500 locations across America in all 50 states.

“We see tremendous value in the new MoviePass model and believe that with our access to media, we have the distribution advantage to strengthen the MoviePass brand and drive new membership growth,” said Arjun Kapur, managing partner at Forecast Labs, in a statement.

Spikes said MoviePass is in discussions with other potential investors as part of its latest funding round.

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