How MoviePass Bombed at the Box Office with Jamie Loftus and Austin Nasso | 33

The Big Flop

Wondery

Society & Culture, Comedy, Business

4.6 • 884 Ratings

🗓️ 29 April 2024

⏱️ 42 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Stacy Spikes came to Hollywood with dreams of revolutionizing the industry. His creation, MoviePass, promised to offer low-fee, all-you-can-watch theater subscriptions for movie fans. The only problem? It couldn't make any money. Find out what happens when Stacy sells out to an eccentric investor, why a dog had to issue an apology to customers, and how John Travolta is somehow at the center of it all.

Misha Brown and special guests Jamie Loftus (The Bechdel Cast, Lolita Podcast) and Austin Nasso (Socially Inept: A Tech Roast) sit back, grab some popcorn, and give a scathing review of MoviePass.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Wondery Plus subscribers can listen to the Big Flop early and ad-free.
0:05.3	Join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app or on Apple Podcasts.
0:14.8	On a lovely, almost spring morning in March of 2018,
0:25.4	Ken, a retiree, is hoping to make a little scratch trading stocks.
0:30.7	He isn't sure what to invest in, but he has about $50,000 to play with.
0:37.1	Ken spots something interesting,
0:39.3	a business called Helios and Matheson Analytics,
0:43.3	the parent company of Movie Pass,
0:46.1	some hot shot new venture.
0:48.8	Currently, Helios' shares are going for $4.62 each,
0:53.9	but Wall Street analysts, who definitely know what they're
0:57.8	talking about, say it's undervalued. With all the attention this new movie pass thing is getting,
1:04.0	they think it's worth $15 a share, at least. It does seem like a good deal. Maybe too good. But, Ken thinks, you only live
1:15.4	once and purchases 10,000 shares in Helios. Now it's time to watch that $46,000 triple in value.
1:25.1	Maybe he can go to Fiji for his next vacation, St. Bards.
1:29.7	But Ken notices that the price of his shares aren't tripling, but dropping. In the blink of an
1:36.5	eye, his shares are worth less than a dollar each. But the analysts still say movie pass
1:42.6	is a hot commodity and Helios is due for an upswing.
1:47.1	So Ken buys some again.
1:49.3	And suddenly, the price falls to just a quarter.
1:52.5	So he buys again.
1:54.2	But the next time he looks, it's worth just eight cents a share.
	...

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