MoviePass snaps up trailer biz Moviefone

MoviePass is growing up. The parent company of the all-you-can-eat movie subscription plan on Thursday said it has acquired Moviefone, the service that provides its users with information on movies and theaters as well as movie trailers and ticketing.

Wildly popular in the 1990s, Moviefone is best known, perhaps, for its famous, “Welcome to Moviefone” greeting parodied by Kramer in “Seinfeld.”

Under the terms of the deal, Helios and Matheson Analytics will pay Verizon $1 million in cash plus $8 million in stock.

That’s far less than the $388 million that AOL, now part of Verizon’s Oath operation, reportedly paid for Moviefone in 1999.

“Moviefone was such an iconic brand. They were still getting 6 million to 7 million unique users a month,” HMNY Chairman and CEO Ted Farnsworth told The Post. “I think they’ve done a great job transitioning to the internet.”

MoviePass, which has about 2.5 million subscribers paying $9.95 a month to watch a movie a day, will be combined with Moviefone, the CEOsaid.

The combined sites will have more scale and advertising opportunities, Farnsworth said. Operationally, Moviefone will be rolled into MoviePass. They operate as two separate companies, but the back-end offices would be integrated.

No layoffs will result from the deal, the CEO said. The focus is on growth and new hires, he added.

“HMNY’svision is to have MoviePass support the entire movie theater industry ecosystem — from distribution to exhibition and now content,” he said.

These going-to-themovies names are joining forces, hoping to deliver on the promo power of the likes of actress Kathleen Hughes doing her bit for Universal Studio’s first 3D movie, “It Came From Outer Space.”