Twenty years after helping found Netflix, Mitch Lowe has taken over as chief executive officer at MoviePass, a five-year old company that offers an all-you-can-watch subscription service for US cinemas.

MoviePass gives subscribers a debit card that allows them to attend as many movies as they want. The service starts at about $30 a month, with higher prices in big cities. The subscription covers 90 per cent of movie theatres in the US, says MoviePass.

However, Lowe admits that he has a lot of work to do to convince both venues and movie fans that this is something they should go along with. “We’ve got a subscription where you can go to the movies at almost any theater that accepts a debit card, yet people don’t really get how great an experience we can make it,” said Lowe. Earlier this year, he took a significant ownership stake in the company and began serving as an adviser, before agreeing to take over as CEO.

Lowe was in the video rental chain store business and became head of their industry association when he met Reed Hastings and Marc Randolph and worked with them to launch the new mail-order DVD business. He was later president of the video kiosk business Red Box.

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