MoviePass Begins Selling Pun-Themed Merchandise, Ignores Death Knell in Background
Image via MoviePassIt’s no secret that MoviePass has been in trouble for awhile. The company, which allows its nearly five million subscribers to pay $10 a month for entry into a certain number of movies per month, is on track to rack up a deficit of $45 million each month this summer. In an SEC filing last week, MoviePass estimated that it will need to earn $1.2 billion to support itself.
$1.2 billion is a whole lot of money and now, since somehow MoviePass’s decision to fund Gotti did not bring in the kind of revenue it hoped for, the company has made the Hail Mary pass decision to begin selling merchandise on its website, as Deadline points out. If MoviePass hopes to survive, the company will have to sell a whole lot of T-shirts, but maybe it’s working: As of Friday, the company’s stock prices are up from roughly one cent per share to a whopping 32. Pop the champagne.
The shirts come in either red, white or black, and each bear only the MoviePass logo in various font sizes, making the shirts (aside from a few Black Panther designs) shockingly plain.
However, this is not to say that the movie-inspired puns each piece of merch is titled after aren’t remarkable in their own unhinged way. Here’s the definitive list of all the MoviePass merchandise, ranked by the Rotten Tomatos scores of the movies that would be embarrassed to be associated with them:
8. Sleeves Like Us (32%) – Coming in rightfully at last place (since we’re not even 100 percent sure whether this is a pun on Spies Like Us), this long sleeve features a white MoviePass logo on a red Gildan t-shirt and costs $40 (the same amount of money you could use to purchase 125 shares of MoviePass stock).
7. 10 Things I Hat About You (62%) – We’re above making the “Ten things we hate about this financial plan” joke. You’re welcome.
6. Shirty Dancing (72%) – As the website states, this plain red T-shirt is perfect to wear “to the theater, in a tunnel, in Vermont, etc.” or even to the funeral of this company’s pride.
5. Dark Roast Rises (87%) – This is the coffee cup pun Gotham deserves.
4. Shirty Rotten Scoundrels and The Big Shirt (88%) – Our first tie! Shirty Rotten Scoundrels is a plain white T-shirt with the MoviePass logo in size 8 font in the corner. It is described on the MoviePass website as “a comfortable staple you can wear to all the movies you’re seeing. You could also wear it to go buy some staples.”
3. Shirt in the Dark (93%) – This one’s funny because the shirt is black. You know, like darkness, or the opposite of hope and/or the profitability of a company.
2. Close Encounters of the Shirt Kind and Shirty Harry (95%) – This plain white long-sleeve Gildan shirt is a steal at $39.99—or for $6.70 on Amazon.
1. Hood Will Hunting and The Shirt Locker (97%) – Behold, a hoodie pun of equivalent quality to Ben Affleck’s back tattoo—how do you like them apples?
Ineligible entries include both Shirt Russell and Hat Damon; we’ll leave those percentages up to you.
Read our update on MoviePass’s recent price hikes for more popular movies here.