Entertainment

MoviePass Is Relaunching Next Month. Here's How to Sign Up for the Theater Subscription Service

The relaunched service will feature three pricing tiers that will depend on the market, but is estimated to “generally” be at $10, $20 and $30, with each level getting a certain number of credits toward movies every month

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MoviePass, the embattled subscription-based cinema service, is expected to relaunch next month, nearly three years after it shut down over financial woes.

The new MoviePass is scheduled to launch "on or around Labor Day," according to its website, and users wanting to join the service have a five-day window to sign up for a waitlist that went live Thursday, Aug. 25.

"All who join the waitlist will receive priority access to the service and 10 friend invites," said a notice on MoviePass' website. "Space is limited don't wait. Once the waitlist is closed the only way to join will be through an invite from a friend."

However, the site was already facing some technical difficulties Thursday morning. Shortly after its waitlist opened at 9 a.m. ET, those wanting to sign up reported receiving an error message.

MoviePass tweeted that its servers had crashed due to "overwhelming demand."

The issue was resolved and the waitlist was reopened about four hours later, according to a tweet posted at 1:20 p.m. ET.

Meanwhile, it was not immediately clear which cinema chains are actually participating, but the company's site says the new service “will feature all major theaters that accept major credit cards in the U.S.” A MoviePass spokesperson declined NBC News' request for comment and referred to a Business Insider story published Monday that says the service has partnerships with 25% of theaters nationwide.

What's more is that the service will be launched in waves depending on local interest, and not initially available nationwide, according to the MoviePass website.

Another detail that appear to be vague is pricing. The relaunched service will feature three pricing tiers that will depend on the market, but is estimated to “generally” be at $10, $20 and $30, with each level getting a certain number of credits toward movies every month.

In 2019, MoviePass notified subscribers that it planned to close down the service because its “efforts to recapitalize MoviePass have not been successful to date. Prior to the service’s closure, MoviePass had been struggling for more than a year. In March 2018, MoviePass launched a revamped version of its unlimited plan, which let users watch one movie per day for $9.95 per month, as part of an eleventh-hour attempt to revive the subscription service. However, the service saw its subscriber base plummet from more than 3 million members to about 225,000 by April 2019.

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