The CEO of MoviePass wants its new fantasy game to do for Hollywood what FanDuel has for sports
"Sports has really learned how to create engagement," Spikes told Business Insider. "I think we can learn something from them for the movie industry."
The movie ticket subscription company is launching this week the beta version of a fantasy box office game called Mogul. In this game, moviegoers can try to predict how upcoming films will perform in theaters.
Like in fantasy sports, players can build leagues — or, in Mogul's case, movie studios — with teams that include actors, directors, and movies. Players are given a budget in digital coins to build a studio and score points based on the film's box office performance.
Spikes hopes the free-to-play game will drive audience engagement with daily and weekly tournaments, by setting a roster and playing out seasonally, or through head-to-head matchups with other users.
If the game becomes popular, MoviePass may try to expand with gaming elements that mirror sweepstakes or other markets where players can make real money, Spikes said. He pointed to services like FanDuel and DraftKings as potential models.
But, for now, he likened Mogul to "Monopoly for the entertainment industry."
MoviePass wanted the game to be a 'sizable leap forward' in tech
Spikes said the idea for Mogul came out of MoviePass' Friday staff calls, when employees talk about what they think the top five films will be at the box office each weekend. He pointed to recent breakout films like " Minecraft" that crushed box office projections and caught some in Hollywood off guard.
MoviePass saw an opportunity to box office predictions into a game to make the app "stickier for customers" and engage them more with social features.
"We were always talking about what we thought the weekend gross would be, and it was just part of our culture," Spikes said. "That was the genesis, or the beginning of us moving into this direction."
Players on Mogul have studios, which operate similar to how leagues do for fantasy sports. Users can select the movies, actors, and directors they want on their team by paying for them with in-game currency called Mogul Coin. Each player gets 1 million Mogul Coins to start.
Points are then awarded based on the net the movie makes at the box office. So, if the film "Wicked" makes double its production budget at the box office, the value of the film, its director, and actors like Cynthia Erivo would double in Mogul, Spike said as an example. An actor or director's value might increase even more if they win an Oscar.
The game is built on Sui blockchain technology, which Spikes said gives MoviePass options for rewarding players or expanding the platform.
"That's unique in that if you do reward people, whether you want to do digital collectibles or other things, building it on blockchain makes it easier to do that," he said.
Like MoviePass did when it launched movie ticket subscriptions, Spikes wanted to do something that was a "sizable leap forward" with technology.
"I don't think you could have built this game very well 10 years ago," Spikes said. "It wouldn't have worked if you didn't have all of these other technologies that you can use now."
Mogul has a waitlist of over 400,000 people
Over 400,000 people signed up for the waitlist to play Mogul, Spikes said.
The company isn't planning to monetize it through ads or in-app purchases at the moment. It's mainly looking to get users to play the game and give feedback on its mechanics.
You don't have to be a MoviePass subscriber to play, but the company is thinking about ways to reward players who are subscribers or go see movies in theaters with bonuses.
That's one of the points of the game, after all.
"The more you engage in that way, the more likely it is, you're actually going to go to the theater," Spikes said.
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