The archive · Business Models · Strategic decision · 2018
AMC's A-List: three movies a week in any format for $19.95 a month
Faced with MoviePass, AMC launched its own pass in 2018: three movies a week in any format for $19.95 a month, priced to pay for itself.
AMC Entertainment Holdings
What it had to solve
US cinema attendance had been declining for years, and in 2017 MoviePass upended pricing by offering a movie a day for $9.95 a month, drawing more than three million subscribers while losing money on every heavy user. AMC's CEO called that model unsustainable — then had to answer the subscription question himself.
How it works
By 2017 moviegoing in the US had been sliding for years, and MoviePass weaponised that frustration: for $9.95 a month subscribers could see a film a day. The offer drew more than three million members and made subscription the question every chain had to answer, yet it lost money on the films its heaviest users watched — its parent reported a loss of nearly $127 million in the second quarter of 2018.
AMC's answer came on 19 June 2018: A-List, a $19.95-a-month tier of its Stubs loyalty program, rolling out on 26 June. Members got up to three movies a week at any US AMC in any format — IMAX, Dolby Cinema and RealD 3D with no upcharge — plus repeat viewings, no online booking fees and concession perks. CEO Adam Aron called the price, about double MoviePass's, 'simple and sustainable': the maths assumed an average of 2.5 films a month, not a film a day.
The plan worked faster than AMC dared hope. Fourteen weeks in, more than 400,000 people had enrolled — 80% of the 500,000 AMC had expected by its first anniversary — while MoviePass shrank its offer to three movies a month and its parent posted the quarterly loss. A-List is still running today: by 2025 AMC said it had close to a million members, and the pass had become a Gen Z cultural marker and, in the chain's own words, 'a little bit of a marketing machine'.
Why it lands
- Subscription kept the emotional pull of 'unlimited' movies, but the three-a-week cap and $19.95 price matched the economics of the average member, not the fanatic.
- Including premium formats made the pass feel like a luxury deal while AMC's revenue-sharing agreements with IMAX and Dolby protected its per-ticket economics.
- It turned AMC's own loyalty program and app into the sales channel, locking the extra visits to its own screens instead of subsidising a rival's universal pass.
- Aron's public contrast — MoviePass's model was unsustainable, his was priced to profit — gave the launch a discipline that a market-share land grab would have lacked.
What it did
Fourteen weeks after launch AMC said more than 400,000 people had enrolled — 80% of its one-year goal of 500,000 and 40% of its two-year goal of a million — which Aron called 'an enormous milestone'. MoviePass, meanwhile, had cut its offer to three movies a month as its parent burned cash, reporting a loss of nearly $127 million in the second quarter of 2018.
What you can take
Copy the rival's insight, not its price: keep subscription's pull, cap usage, and price against average behaviour — heavy users then subsidise each other instead of sinking you.
Since then
A-List outlived its rival: MoviePass cut its terms and collapsed, while AMC's pass grew from 400,000 members in late 2018 toward the million mark, surviving price rises and the pandemic. By 2025 AMC said it had close to a million members, with Gen Z its fastest-growing segment; subscribers treated the pass as an identity badge, and the chain called the membership a marketing machine. Even as AMC itself struggled with debt, A-List stayed the bright spot — proof that a subscription priced to real costs can outlast one priced to buy market share.
Sources
- AMC Theatres Takes on MoviePass With $20-Per-Month Ticket Program
- AMC Subscription Moviegoing Service Tops 400,000 Subscribers
- Inside the Gen Z cult of AMC A-list
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