Goodbye, and say farewell to Moviefone

By Sean O'Neal | February 24, 2014 | 5:32pm

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The dream of a gleaming future when movie showtimes are available at the touch of several buttons—after first listening to an audio-only trailer, then to our new menu options, as they have changed—is over. The New York Times reports that Moviefone quietly shut down its 777-FILM service over the weekend, with grandparents calling to check when 3 Days To Kill might be playing being greeted not by the booming, iconic, “Hello, and welcome to Moviefone!” of Mr. Moviefone, but rather a farewell message from “a voice decidedly scrawnier in timbre,” suggesting that Mr. Moviefone is slowly dying and you never even bothered to visit.

After nearly 25 years that saw a boom of around 3 million calls per week in the 1990s, dipping to a vague number of “thousands” in more recent times, Moviefone will disconnect its phone line in about a month, leaving callers mashing out the names of the movies they want to see to an uncaring digital void. Still, grieve not for Moviefone: It plans to concentrate on its app, and the brand is being readied for relaunch by AOL, which should help bring it boldly into 1999.