Graphic by William Joel / The Verge
MoviePass, the subscription service that spent enormous amounts of venture capitalists’ money subsidizing movie tickets in a bid to upend the theater business model, is officially shutting down on September 14th. The news, announced today via emails to subscribers and reported today by CNBC, marks the end of a tumultuous two-year saga that saw an once-popular platform go to extreme lengths to keep its business running, despite the obvious and fraught financial cost.
Last we heard of MoviePass, the company was laying off huge swaths of its staff, including the team responsible for brokering partnerships with movie theaters, following a sudden, supposedly temporary shutdown of its services in July. The company didn’t say when it would…