CMQ Weekly 03: Nigeria’s largest cinema chain wants to run a subscription service, but there's a massive plothole
A review of Filmhouse Cinemas’ subscription service.
In September 2019, MoviePass, an American subscription-based movie ticketing platform, shut down its services, with its parent company filing for bankruptcy months later in January 2020. The service offered users access to one movie per day at the cinema for less than $10 a month. It eventually failed because its model was too good to be true and couldn’t keep up with unit economics. Still, MoviePass’ eight-year run showed cinema operators what was possible.
Now, the three largest cinema chains in the US – AMC, Cinemark, and Regal – have similar subscription services, with two other smaller chains – Alamo Drafthouse and Showcase – doing the same. In Nigeria, there’s Filmhouse, which offers access to unlimited cinema tickets, free movies online (from a limited catalogue), and discounts on some concessions at the cinema for ₦5,999 ($11) or ₦8,999 ($16.5) a month.
Filmhouse is Nigeria’s largest cinema chain, and in 2021, it introduced a two-tiered subscription service. The first is FH+ Sil…
Keep reading with a 7-day free trial
Subscribe to Communiqué to keep reading this post and get 7 days of free access to the full post archives.