I never thought we’d ever see this!
Variety has reported that RiffTrax and Shout! Studios have teamed to produce four new episodes of “Mystery Science Theater 3000.” Mike Nelson, Kevin Murphy, and Bill Corbett will be the creative leads and will be reprising their roles as Mike Nelson, Tom Servo and Professor Bobo, and Crow T. Robot and Brain Guy. Mary Jo Pehl will also return as Pearl Forrester. A Kickstarter is now underway to raise $20,000, though that total has already been far exceeded at the time of this writing.
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Gotta admit, I did NOT see this coming. Sounds like they’re getting more of the crew on board as well, given the Kickstarter page mentions Beez and Patrick are coming back for it, with promises of more.
Here’s hoping it turns out well. I’ve got my pledge in.
Put in my pledge and I can’t wait.
They wanted to raise $20,000.
It’s now at $714,600…
Per the FAQ, they picked 20,000 to commemorate the 20th anniversary of Rifftrax. They were hoping to raise quite a bit more than that, which, as you say, they are.
I expect we’ll see some stretch goals in the coming weeks.
Excuse while I fangirl scream for about the 50th time today!!! And I have pledged! As always!
My first question: In that final failed fundraising effort that Joel ran during the writers strike, what was his original and revised downgraded goals. And what was the final amount pledged?
It’s going to be really curious compare those numbers to whatever Rifftrax gets.
This is incredible news. And since they are going to do it on a smaller budget than Joel wanted, it sounds like they intend restore the low budget “cow town puppet show” feel of the original. I welcome that as well.
And who knows maybe somewhere down the road this opens the door to appearances by Frank and Trace.
Erik of RiffTrax said on the Discord that “Our sort of internal mission statement is to hearken back to the Sci-Fi Channel era” which is the vibe I’m getting from that video. Also with all the work they’re apparently going to do on sets and props I hope they keep them around for more than just four episodes!
I rummaged through old emails. The original base level was $4.8m for six eps. Unfortunately, I don’t have the revised numbers or the amount pledged.
I pledged at the Holiday ornament level, plus an extra pin set and coin for a relative’s Christmas present. From the looks of things, they’ll hit $1 million by the 12-hour mark.
I’m still interested in knowing if anyone from the Netflix/Gizmoplex seasons will be involved. And, given the time frame, did Joel know this was coming when he bowed out?
(“Ken, give it a rest. Just enjoy the good news, OK?”)
At a glance it looks like the main campaign page is on archive.org and says the final amount pledged was $2,715,304. I can’t get the updates to show up, but I checked my old e-mails and it looks like he revised the goal down to $4M.
Of course, whatever Rifftrax ends up raising on this one won’t be apples-to-apples since Kickstarter takes a big cut (which is presumably why Joel and co decided not to use it for that last fundraiser), but I think it’s reasonable to assume the last fundraiser would have done better on Kickstarter, even given that they were at a disadvantage trying to do it during the SAG and WGA strikes.
Wow, less than 24 hours to pass $1,000,000. Rifftrax has never failed to meet a goal.
This has been an up and down period in my life. Two years ago, I lost my wife of 32 years after her 5 year battle with ovarian cancer. This last year, in rapid succession, I met someone on a cruise, fell in love, was diagnosed with incurable brain cancer (glioblastoma), found out that my first two grandchildren will be born this summer, and got engaged. Now I find out about this. Well, if this isn’t a reason to fight to keep living, I don’t know what is. (Yes, that’s a bit of an overstatement. It is something to help me look forward, though.)
So does this mean they won’t be doing RiffTrax anymore? Or will they still put out RT stuff in addition to these things?
no but Steve Allen did
Wow, something mangled the HTML in that last post. Maybe it was because I was trying to reply to three different posts at once? Trying again:
Part of that is that they’ve always delivered. I’ve learned to approach crowdfunding with a pretty healthy dose of skepticism, but Rifftrax has proven its reliability.
Plus, they usually give you a bunch of shorts for contributing even a buck; I wouldn’t be surprised to see that offer return in the coming weeks.
Best of luck to you.
Okay, sorry about the four in a row; last one for now:
Per the FAQ:
“Old-school handmade sets”
FINALLY!
Words can’t express how much I hate the greenscreen “sets” that NuMST has been using until now
Oh yeah. I have always hated how over sleek and over-produced the MST revival was (not to mention the 20 minutes of end credits)
Anything that takes the series back to its roots is 100% welcome
This is what the MST revival should have been from the very start. I mean no disrespect to Joel but he really botched it.
i saw a pig just flying outside my window, and my friend in hell is texting me about there being winter storms down there!
no but in all seriousness? im deeply excited
I will never cease to be amazed at how many people think the Season 11 and 12 sets weren’t physical. You can see them walking around the sets. There are set photos. They used Greenscreen for Season 13 because of all the COVID nonsense.
I don’t know why you think that the budget will be smaller. Joel wanted more money, but for the $6.36M they raised for Season 13, they produced 13 episodes, 13 shorts, multiple “tribute” specials, Livestream watchalongs, and new material for the Vault Picks, etc. Do you think if RiffTrax ends with, say, $3.5M they’ll produce half as much?
This is absolutely correct, Joel made a few big errors when it came to the season 14 crowdfund, which again, raised $2.7 million but Joel’s revised goal was $4 million.
1) it wasn’t on Kickstarter. I know they take a huge chunk of what gets pledged and Joel tried something else to mitigate that. This greatly reduced visibility as like it or not, Kickstarter is the main place to go for crowdfunding ideas.
2) it launched during the SAG-AFTRA/WGA strikes. Nobody involved could promote it until about a week to go. We actually had no idea who was going to be involved because of this.
3) it was in November, not the best time to ask for money as people are generally budgeting for the holidays. I understand Joel wanting it to end with Turkey Day, but fundraisers earlier in the year and spring are better as there’s tax refund money. Plus in 2021 a lot of us had stimulus cash to throw around.
4) the 2021 Kickstarter’s physical rewards were…overly ambitious and they ran into numerous production and shipping issues. While the main goal was of course a season of new episodes, the first couple of which were delivered in under a year, the physical rewards were delayed so long that some people didn’t get them until 2023. While they apologized and streamlined the physical items for season 14, launching another crowdfund six months after people got the items they pledged for 2 years earlier was *terrible* optics.
5) some of the money was earmarked for “surgically enhanced” classic episodes, making them look a little better on modern devices. While a few were released this way prior to this, it’s not really what people wanted.
I see a lot of “hurr durr season 13 bad!” on the subreddit and Facebook. It was good to great. I’m actually hoping Jonah and Emily are involved in this in some way, it’d be a shame if they were just cast aside.
I see people like “look, Rifftrax only wanted $20,000 to make 4 episodes! What’s Joel’s problem?” They knew it was going to raise considerably more than that. The big % over goal just looks sexier to passersby. Someone like Shout/Radial (or whatever RT’s operating budget is) would be funding most of this, but this replaces their annual live event Kickstarter, and provides physical rewards and digital downloads and whatnot. You’re not making a television show for $20,000 in 2026, unless they shoot it on someone’s iPhone, which I don’t think is the case.
People are entitled to their opinions, of course, but yeah I thought Munchie, Mordrid, and Demon Squad were all-timers.
I haven’t been in the fandom as long as some of the folks here (my cable lineup didn’t carry Comedy Central or Sci-Fi until the mid-’90s) but I’ve been around long enough to remember people grousing about how boring and bad season 8 was. Season 8! Giant Spider Invasion, Jack Frost, Prince of Space, Space Mutiny, Time Chasers, Overdrawn at the Memory Bank season 8!
Somebody, somewhere is always going to gripe about how the new thing isn’t as good as the old thing. On back to “I hate Tom Servo’s new voice!”
I’m hoping they can drop by, and if they can’t, that they at least get a mention. I feel like season 13 got a little bogged down in continuity and lore, but a brief acknowledgement could work.
If we’re getting cameos my first choice(s) would be Trace and Frank, but I’d be happy to see any of the old cast drop by.
And if not, well, who knows what the future may bring? It’s great to have the Sci-Fi Channel-era team back, but hopefully it’s not the end and there will be more surprises in the coming years.
If they have surpassed they goal by allot. Would they do more than 4 movies then?
So, we’ve dealt with the trivia, now let’s address the the important issue: nomenclature.
Vis: Will these episodes officially be season 14?
I suspect we won’t know for sure until/unless there’s another season after this one.
First episode reveal: Deathsport, starring David Carradine
Things got bigger with today’s update. Trace and Frank will return as Dr. F and TV’s Frank for the final episode.
This gives me so much joy just to read. So much joy.
I’ve been concerned that the Mads releases have slowed way down. I don’t know if this has anything to do with it or not. But today I’ll just enjoy the warm glow.
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/rifftrax/rifftrax-makes-mst3k/posts/4605922?ref=ksr_email_mktg_auto_backer_project_update_registered_users
Well now. I guess I should think of some more things to suggest.
…Would it be too greedy to ask for Trace to take over as Crow for a segment (like how Josh got to do Servo again in season 13)?
oh please yes let that happen.
if we can now get a Susan Hart owned film or Godzilla that would be the icing on the cake for all of this…
I will consider it season 14 because it is still called MST3k, Rifftrax is the subtitle, and it includes Mike, the Bots and the Mads. The episodes will be labeled 1401-1404 in my library.
And now we get the announcement that Trace will be the art director as well!
Episode #2 – Space Raiders
My KennySense is tingling.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oQ07FcOFNGo
I just looked at the Kickstarter page. They’re just shy of $2 million, and are listed as having reached 9593% of their goal.
So, I can only figure Rifftrax has employed Bialystock and Bloom as financial consultants.
I just hope the last bad movie in the new set is memorable. Every time they did a milestone episode, the targeted films — Mitchell, Laserblast, Diabolique, The Christmas Dragon — weren’t sufficiently awful for the occasion.
I’ll buy “insufficiently awful”, but you really don’t think Mitchell or Laserblast were memorable?
I still kinda wish the bots were different colors for different actors portraying them. Version 1.0, 2.0, or year models. How many Crow’s have their been? 5? They def have different personalities and voices, why not different models and model names?
Maybe I should just relax