From posting a $104 million quarterly loss to stripping subscriber options on a weekly basis, MoviePass simply can’t keep it together with an unsustainable business plan. The service isn’t likely to last much longer, that much is clear, yet outgoing correspondent Hasan Minhaj of The Daily Show has a plan, which won’t save the service but may produce some laughs.
While telling host Trevor Noah that he had hoped to spend the summer watching over $500 per month in movies on a $10 monthly pass, Minhaj lamented the fact that this wouldn’t be happening. Then he theorized why MoviePass even happened in the first place — “subscription culture”:
“We’re Millennials. It’s all about subscription culture. You pay a small fee, and in exchange you get everything. Unlimited streaming from Netflix and Spotify. Unlimited shipping from Prime. Unlimited STDs from Tinder.”
Noah then patiently explained that this same logic is what challenged Obamacare. That is, young people didn’t think they needed healthcare and declined to sign up, so older and sick people were the only ones using the service’s benefits, which weighed down the system. Well, Minhaj had a tidy “solution” to this mess:
“I get what you’re saying. We need to combine MoviePass and Obamacare. Okay, so young people get movies, and old sick people get health care. We’ll call it ‘Moviecare.'”
Well, this is a nice idea, anyway. And with that, Minhaj bid farewell on the way to his new Netflix show, The Patriot Act with Hasan Minhaj, which has been ordered up for an “unprecedented” amount of episodes before even debuting. This move makes Minhaj the first Indian-American host of a weekly comedy series, and may his success ride much further than that of MoviePass.
