MoviePass is making yet another change to its subscription service, this time announcing it will soon limit customers to three movies per month for the $9.95 monthly subscription fee, effective August 15th.

In an interview published Monday in The Wall Street Journal, MoviePass CEO Mitch Lowe says his company is focusing on the 85% of U.S. customers who see three of fewer movies per month, acknowledging that those who see more may opt for AMC Entertainment’s competing $19.95, three movies per week service. Along with this new “three movies per month” policy, Lowe says MoviePass is ending several recently-enacted service features:

• The recently-announced fee increase to $14.95/month is rolling back to $9.95/month
• Access to new releases will be immediate, no longer limited to two weeks after premiere date
• MoviePass will end its controversial and wildly unpopular “peak pricing” surcharges
• Users will no longer have to upload photos of tickets to prove they aren’t committing fraud

These latest changes come a year after the 2011 company rolled out what seemed (and as it turned out, was) a too-good-to-be-true, $9.95 per month service that allowed subscribers to see up to one movie per day – an offer which MoviePass, in recent months, started tweaking, after hemorrhaging tens of millions of dollars in losses each month.

During that time, MoviePass frequently toyed with changing its monthly pricing structure (most recently announcing a price hike to $14.95 a month), added so-called peak pricing surcharges (which it added even on showtimes where no actual surge in attendance was taking place), and most recently, announced that newly-released blockbusters would be unavailable to subscribers until after two weeks in theaters – all to the increasing ire of its base of three million U.S. customers, many of whom had already been annoyed by nearly non-existent MoviePass customer service.

The pinnacle of the customer dissatisfaction took place on Thursday, July 26th, when the service suddenly stopped working for moviegoers after MoviePass, without any advance warning, temporarily ceased operations to raise five million dollars to pay its creditors. MoviePass CEO Mitch Lowe, a co-founder of Netflix (before it became the online streaming service of today) and the former president of the RedBox DVD and video game rental company, later issued a lengthy apology to subscribers via e-mail:

“I want to personally apologize to each of you for the inconsistencies and unreliability of our service over the past few days. We’ll be in touch with more updates as we have them.”

AMC Theaters, which a year ago derided MoviePass’ $9.95/month model as “unsustainable,” in June announced it’s own Stubs A-List service, which, for $19.95 a month, allows moviegoers to see up to three movies a week at AMC theaters nationwide. AMC is smartly hoping to catch the wave in moviegoing popularity generated by MoviePass, who claims it helped spark a 10% surge in moviegoing since its $9.95 offer, and more profits for movie studios and big U.S. theater chains as it tumbled into the red.

“We really do know what we’re doing here and we’re off to a great start. We will continue to manage with profitability in mind.” -AMC Theaters CEO Adam Aron

AMC Theaters recently beat second quarter earnings estimates – a far rosier picture than a year ago, amidst a box office slump and sizable loss for the mammoth theater chain, which currently owns the UK’s Odeon cinemas group and Nordic Cinema. CEO Adam Aron says its Stubs A-List program, while targeting the frequent moviegoing customer, will not be the biggest part of its business and that  AMC will carefully monitor enrollments to ensure it doesn’t grow too fast too soon.

What are your thoughts about MoviePass? Is this a sustainable plan? Will you remain a customer? Post your comments below.