Mitch Lowe: Last News

Theodore Farnsworth, the former CEO of MoviePass parent Helios & Matheson Analytics, pleaded guilty to charges of defrauding and conspiring to defraud investors in two public companies, including lying about artificial intelligence capabilities that it didn’t have.

Katcy Stephan Back in 2017, a little red debit card was the hottest ticket in town — for film buffs and investors alike. One swipe of a MoviePass membership card gave access to daily movie tickets at a staggeringly low monthly subscription rate of $9.95. And the concept promised to redefine the future of the moviegoing business.

MoviePass CEO Stacey Spikes said the service may give users buying tickets on the app the option of watching a bucket of commercials in exchange for credits they can cash in for movie tickets.

Gene Maddaus Senior Media Writer A former MoviePass executive was arrested Tuesday on charges that he embezzled $260,000 from the company to pay for a party at Coachella Music Festival. Khalid Itum, 42, was indicted on two counts of wire fraud and two counts of money laundering. The charges allege that Itum submitted sham invoices to MoviePass to pay for the marketing event, which he had run through a separate company that he owned and controlled. MoviePass collapsed in 2019, after losing hundreds of millions of dollars on its all-you-can-watch theatrical subscription business. Last November, the two top executives — Theodore Farnsworth and Mitch Lowe — were indicted on securities fraud charges for allegedly deceiving investors about the sustainability of the business.

The National Enquirer (U.S. and U.K. editions) and sister publications Globe and National Examiner are being unloaded by A360 Media to a JV of Vinco Ventures and Ted Farnsworth’s Icon Publishing. The exec was CEO of Helios & Matheson, a public company that acquired MoviePass in 2017 only see the ticketing service go belly-up three years later.

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission has sued former top execs at MoviePass and its parent company, Helios + Matheson, for fraud.

Gene Maddaus Senior Media Writer MoviePass was founded on a lie, the Securities and Exchange Commission alleged in a complaint filed on Monday night. The company introduced its $9.95-a-month, all-you-can-watch subscription plan in August 2017. According to the complaint, executives Theodore Farnsworth and Mitch Lowe knew that the offer was just a “marketing gimmick” and that the price was unsustainably low. But in public, they claimed that they had done rigorous market testing and determined they could turn a profit. In fact, they had done no testing, the SEC said. Asked by Variety if the company would eventually have to raise its prices, Farnsworth said, “The answer is no.” Critics, he went on, “don’t understand our business model.”

Moviepass is possibly back.