The wait for the Alamo Drafthouse movie-ticket subscription plan is almost over.
The popular chain will launch Alamo Season Pass by the end of the year across all its theaters, the company's founder and CEO, Tim League, told Business Insider.
Since July, patrons at its locations in Yonkers, New York, and Raleigh, North Carolina, have used a beta version of Season Pass. League said he'd been impressed by the data from the beta testing and is now putting the final touches on Season Pass to make it available to his entire chain.
"It's working for us, and we love it," League said. "It's one of our biggest priorities this year, to get that rolled out."
League said Alamo Season Pass would be an unlimited plan for $20 a month in most areas of the country. He added that in some cases the monthly price would depend on the market, so expect it to be a little more at places like Drafthouse's theaters in downtown Los Angeles (set to open by the middle of the year) and Brooklyn, New York. (A Drafthouse in lower Manhattan is scheduled to open by the end of the year as well.)
Season Pass will be available through the Alamo Drafthouse app (on iOS or Android) to reserve seats — days in advance, if you like — from anywhere, as well as add tickets.
In August, Business Insider reported that the company said the Season Pass beta test in Yonkers had over 40,000 people sign up on the waitlist in less than a month. At that time, Season Pass holders could see a movie as many times as they wanted and could order tickets to standard-format 2D or 3D movies but not any special Drafthouse screenings with a higher ticket price. Those features may also be in Season Pass when it launches, though Alamo Drafthouse didn't give any more specifics about it.
Read more: MoviePass is bringing back an unlimited plan, but there's a catch
Drafthouse's Season Pass will join AMC's Stubs A-List and Cinemark's Movie Club as a chain-specific subscription service. And others are beginning to crop up with the help of Sinemia Enterprise, like those from Studio Movie Grill and National Amusements.
Movie-ticket subscription services have seen a surge in popularity since MoviePass lowered its monthly price to about $10 in the summer of 2017 and gained millions of subscribers. Though MoviePass has gone through a series of changes to get its cash burn under control, Business Insider reported on Monday that it would bring back an unlimited plan.
"I really admire what MoviePass did to disrupt this industry," League said. "To say, 'Hey, there might be another way that actually works.'"
League has certainly bought into the subscription model and said he thinks it will help the company introduce unique movies to its customers.
"The most exciting thing about it to me is that people are watching more movies," League said. "And they are watching a wide variety of movies, and that's part of what we're trying to accomplish by becoming bigger as a company is to get more and more people to fall in love with a wide swath of amazing movies, and I see Season Pass as part of that."
