The latest revival of “Mystery Science Theater 3000” is off to a strong start. At the time of this publishing, the Kickstarter campaign for the four new episodes of the beloved series has generated $1.17 million dollars in just 24 hours.
To put that in perspective, that is roughly equivalent to the budget of the 1975 Joe Don Baker film “Mitchell.”
The original goal of the Kickstarter was to raise $20,000 in celebration of the 20th anniversary of RiffTrax. The campaign runs through March 16. As Variety exclusively reported, RiffTrax and Shout! Studios — the latter of which now fully owns the rights to “MST3K” — have teamed to produce new episodes of the show that will see Michael J. Nelson, Kevin Murphy, Bill Corbett, return both in front of and behind the camera. Original series star Mary Jo Pehl will also return.
Officially titled “Mystery Science Theater 3000: The RiffTrax Experiments,” the new episodes will shoot later this year in Minneapolis, MN. The four movies that will be featured in the new episodes will be revealed over the course of the campaign. The episodes will then be released later this year on RiffTrax’s website.
Nelson, Corbett, and Murphy have been performing under the RiffTrax banner since 2006. In that time, they have riffed over 1,000 short films, major blockbusters, hilarious low-budget fare, TV shows, and more. They also frequently host RiffTrax live screenings where they live riff a movie in front of an audience.
“MST3K,” which launched on a Minneapolis UHF station in 1988, featured series creator Joel Hodgson and later Nelson and two robot sidekicks as they riffed on cheesy B-movies by providing their own hilarious commentary. It then moved to Comedy Central and finished its run on the Sci-Fi Channel (now Syfy) in 1999 after 197 episodes. The feature film “Mystery Science Theater 3000: The Movie,” which riffed the sci-fi classic “This Island Earth,” was released in 1996.
Hodgson previously revived the show via a Kickstarter campaign in 2015, with Seasons 11 and 12 airing on Netflix, followed by a 13th season on the online streaming platform The Gizmoplex.
English (US) ·