MovieFone — the online theater ticket website that was once sold to AOL in 1999 for $388 million in stock — was acquired at a bankruptcy auction on Thursday for a bid of $1,075,000, the Hollywood Reporter reported. A business listed as Born In Cleveland, LLC was the winning bidder for the site, per a filing with the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of New York on March 19. MovieFone had most recently been owned by bankrupt MoviePass owner Helios & Matheson, which acquired the site in 2018 from AOL's parent company with the goal to use its then-6 million average monthly audience to grow its subscriber base. MovieFone, which began in 1989 as interactive phone guide for film listings and showtimes, launched a website (MovieLink) in 1995 and once touted in its '90s heyday that 100 million moviegoers used its service. The service was part of AOL's $4.4 billion sale to Verizon in 2015 before it was sold for $23 million in April 2018 to Helios & Matheson.
