The true origin of “Netflix and chill” may have been discovered, after MoviePass CEO Mitch Lowe revealed that he once sent adult films to thousands of Netflix users.
Lowe is one of the co-founders of Netflix, and told the hilarious story about how the unfortunate mix-up happened in the early days of the company, as reported by Page Six.
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“When you get DVDs you usually have nice labels, but when you’re going fast you don’t have time for labels. It turns out that [the person] who was a duplicator, also duplicated pornography,” Lowe recalled while speaking at the “Off-Script” Q&A series.
“We sent thousands and thousands and a couple hundred had porn on them! We told our customers to send them back — no one did,” he added.
Lowe also spoke about how when the company was just starting to explore and test transferring video to DVD in a quicker turn-around, they used the recorded testimony of then-President Bill Clinton from Monica Lewinsky trial.
While he got his start with Netflix, Lowe also worked with Redbox for a period of time as well, before becoming the CEO of Moviepass in 2016.
Moviepass is a “subscription-based movie ticketing service.” It was founded in 2011 and its headquarters resides in New York City, New York.
The service works by allowing the subscriber to see one free movie a day at a theater buy using their exclusive Mastercard provided at the time of purchase.
Upon receiving their Moviepass card, users then download the Moviepass app from the respective App store provided by their smart phone carrier, and use that to manage their account.
When heading to the cinema to catch a flick, users pull up the app, find the theater in the list provided, and sign in to their movie. This enables the card to be used when it is provided to the ticket clerk who processes the purchase.
Last year the company made headlines when they dropped the price of the service to less than $10 a month for “unlimited films.”
Speaking about that major change, Lowe previously told reporters that “after years of studying and analysis we found that people want to go to the movies more often, but the pricing keeps going up, and that prevents them from going more. We’re making it more affordable for people.”
