February 24th, 2014 
James Shotwell 
The digital age has claimed the life of another pop culture staple.
Moviefone, which has spent the last three decades helping people in major cities locate showtimes for their local cinemas, has announced plans to end their 777-FILM call in service later this year. The company will still operate digitally, with added focus being placed on the brand’s smartphone app.
Over the weekend, callers were told that the automated service would soon go silent, overtaken by new technology and shifting consumer habits. “The 777-FILM numbers will no longer be in service in the near future,” intones a man with a voice decidedly scrawnier in timbre than Mr. Moviefone’s. “To buy tickets and for all of your showtime information please download the free Moviefone app on your smartphone or iPad.”
Russ Leatherman, the founder of Moviefone and source of its now iconic catchprhrase (“Hello, and welcome to Moviefone”), left the company in November. As far as we know he has not commented on this development.
Speaking with the New York Times over the weekend, Moviefone’s current corporate owner expressed strong emphasis on the need to further explore the realm of digital moving forward.
“The call-in service has been in pretty steady decline,” Jeff Berman, the president of BermanBraun, said in a telephone interview. “Our customers are much more interested in our award-winning app, and we need to invest our resources in the future, part of which involves a major reimagining of Moviefone.”
Ne details about those future plans were divulged.
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