MST3K Is Kickstarting Back To Life 83
New submitter kevin lyda writes: The creator of MST3K wants to bring it back. Anywhere from just three episodes up to a full season. Joel is also including options to make it DRM-free. Wired reports: "Hodgson officially launched a Kickstarter campaign to fund new episodes of the series. The initial goal of $2 million would fund only three episodes, but if the campaign does well enough, the project could make as many as 12 episodes (that maximum order would require $5.5 million). The rewards run the gamut from the typical t-shirt all the way up to fans contributing riffs to the episodes or hosting live installments of the show. But the real fun begins if MST3K finds an angel investor willing to splash some serious cash: 'Finally, if we raise $1 BILLION—stay with me on this one—we’re going to adopt a real live teenage boy and "Truman Show" him into believing he is the Pumaman!'"
Get syfy, spike, others to pick it up! (Score:2)
Get syfy, spike, others to pick it up!
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No need. Just use Hulu or some other streaming service. The target audience for this isn't WWE fans.
Re:Please don't bring it back (Score:4, Insightful)
"I don't like it so NO ONE should like it!"
Are you sure you've never seen Red Dwarf? (Score:1)
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We really need to get off our nostalgia kick. Nostalgia isn't productive. The edgy funny shows of the past are now cliche and these attempt to bring them back will only fail to impress, as we look at these new shows now with our more experienced eyes.
Red Dwarf was an excellent show. But we shouldn't bring it back. They had a few episodes made a couple years ago, and the show had lost its edge. The main characters are getting old, they really don't have the same appeal for the shenanigans they did 20
Re: Please don't bring it back (Score:2)
Voyager was terrible but I recommend rewatching enterprise as it was actually pretty good in parts. The xindi arc was almost up there with the dominion war for sheer epic scale
Re:Please don't bring it back (Score:5, Interesting)
Watching new MST3K episodes wouldn't be nostalgia. And it's not about charm or selling out for another payout. It'd just be a show making jokes about bad movies - and that's still funny, even today in our Internet-first world.
Other thoughts:
* The only thing that really hurts old MST episodes is that some of their humor was pop culture based - especially old TV shows and classic movies. A lot of the jokes go over younger people's heads because they haven't seen Gilligan's Island, Mary Poppins, The Brady Bunch, etc. New episodes would probably be more relevant.
* Joel should try and get Mike Nelson to help with writing. Regardless of whomever any MST3K fan was the funnier guy onscreen, nobody can argue that Mike Nelson was a key writer that drove the show - and that he carried the show on his shoulders alone for the last three seasons after Trace B. (the original voice of Crow T. Robot) left. Without Mike, it just won't have the same charm.
Re:Please don't bring it back (Score:4, Interesting)
Regardless of whomever any MST3K fan was the funnier guy onscreen, nobody can argue that Mike Nelson was a key writer that drove the show - and that he carried the show on his shoulders alone for the last three seasons after Trace B. (the original voice of Crow T. Robot) left. Without Mike, it just won't have the same charm.
"Nobody can argue..." What's the name of that type of fallacy? Have you seen Cinematic Titanic? No Mike Nelson, and a hundred times better than those last seasons of MST3K. The key writers were always Joel and Trace. "Head writer" does NOT mean "the guy that writes the jokes." It's more "the guy who keeps all the joke writers from killing each other." Well, as long as there's no Kevin Murphy I'll be happy. He was always the weakest asset. Cinematic Titanic proved that Joel, Trace, and Josh have the most "charm," to use your term.
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"Nobody can argue..." What's the name of that type of fallacy? Have you seen Cinematic Titanic?
Do you watch Rifftrax? Also hilarious.
Neither are MST3K hilarious. To quote another duo,
Couldn't split up Kato and Nash. (that's true) Couldn't split up Tango and Cash.
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I too like to keep my nostalgia in my past where I don't have to tarnish my rose-tinted memories with ugly realities. Too many times I've made the mistake of revisiting my nostalgic loves only to be let down (e.g. 8-bit and 16-bit video games, my childhood cartoons, original Dr. Who, pro wrestling, etc.). So, I get it...HOWEVER....
1. MST3K always used current events and pop culture references. They aren't going to reboot the show and use the same jokes from 20 years ago.
2. They will be able to put more effo
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Dude, you need to call the police. Whoever forced you to watch MST3K against your will needs to be in jail so you won't have to worry about them doing it again if it gets funded.
Re:Please don't bring it back (Score:4, Funny)
Apparently GP was stuck on a satellite, and couldn't stop the movies because he built some robots.
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$2 Million for 3 episodes??? (Score:3)
That seems extremely expensive at $660,000 per episode/movie (approx).
I wonder how much of that is licensing with the owners of the films? I would have to guess quite a bit.
The Kickstarter doesn't seem to detail this. I will be donating though.
Re:$2 Million for 3 episodes??? (Score:5, Informative)
It scales down per episode after the first three.
1.3M for three more episodes (430k ea for episodes 4-6)
1.1M for each three episodes after that (366k ea for episodes 7-9 and 10-12)
Since you can do an episode for about 370k, there's *apparently* 1M in new rampup costs.
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It likely has to do with set building, and equipment purchase (what can't be rented).
double the budget than the movie being riffed to (Score:3)
meh. look at the cast needed, fx budget needed and just look at the synopsis for mst3k and ST:TNG and it really starts to seem QUITE unreasonable.
but then again, americans seem to think that everything should give a 100k year salary and showbusiness double that.
basically, at 660k, they would be running a higher budget per episode THAN THE FUCKING MOVIES THEY'RE RIFFING TO. for example zombie nightmare had an adjusted for 1987 to 2015 inflation budget of 382,499.18 dollars.
and no, they didn't show it on tv w
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Since it's $2 mil for the first three episodes, and $5.5 mil for twelve episodes; I take that to mean it costs roughly $390,000 per episode ((5.5-2)/12-3)). I'm guessing a little less than half of that first $2 million is for set design, construction, storage, opening and closing animations, music rights/reauthoring/whatever, and so on. The $390k is probably what it costs for studio time, camera rental, writing, crew, on-air talent, film rights, and let's not forget craft services. Mmmm, donuts.
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Sorry to reply to my own post, but I just saw the Joel's AMA [reddit.com] on Reddit. He has a graphic up of how that first $2mil is spent here http://imgur.com/5CvUy9B [imgur.com]. It looks like it's about $250,000 per episode.
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that's a bit suspect calculation since production setup is part of ep budget or should be for anyone anyways.
at any rate, the production setup costs could include buying a house to film in.
the production setup cost is higher than the movies had budget.
say, if they were riffing avgn movie, the production setup cost would be 200 000 higher than the entire budget for the movie being riffed.
it's like he is treating it as a studio production for a major network with staff of 10-20, which for the format is rather
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Because Mystery Science Theater 3000 shows the entire film. The producer of the original film may demand that it would be DRM some how. Granted Mystery Science Theater 3000 may be considered parody... However is can be on the edge of copyright infringement without artist consent. And can lead to a complex legal battle, where one side just may lose.
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That is why Rifftrax [rifftrax.com] was the most ingenious solution to the licensi
Didn't they just yuk-yuk comment over old movies? (Score:2)
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It's about 360k per episode after initial ramp-up. Apparently 1M to get going. They mention an issue with rights, so I assume that's part of the 1M. They say "cleared up," with regard to rights, but that might not mean "cleared up and PAID FOR."
I also assume that like any show, gathering a bunch of people in a writer's room costs salaries, leasing space, blah blah. It's expensive to open doors on anything. That first new camera costs a lot of money.
High end TV production costs *way* more than 1M/episod
Doesn't include Mike, Trace, etc. (Score:3)
Acronym (Score:5, Informative)
It would have been good to see the acronym expanded at least once in TFS...
Re:Acronym (Score:4, Insightful)
I doubt there is anyone visiting /. who hasn't any idea what MST3K is... or at least how to google it
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I often wonder if MST3K was inspired by High Street, a program that ran on a Denver FM station on Saturday nights in the Seventies. They would tell you to watch the evening movie on non-network TV Channel 2, turn the sound off, and listen to a slightly-stoned group of U of Denver undergraduates lip-sync their own sound track. It was claimed to be extemporaneous; they would muddle around a bit until they'd settled on a plot premise, and then they'd run with it.
My most vivid memory is of The Counterfeit Gener
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I doubt there is anyone visiting /. who hasn't any idea what MST3K is... or at least how to google it
We're not all Americans, and it is simply rude to require google for an understanding of a fucking slashdot headline.
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Never heard of it before today
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I applaud you. Why is it so hard to spell out your acronym, at least once. I can think of very few Acronyms that are appropriate to leave on Slashdot.
CPU,GPU, RAM and DRM. DRM is borderline.
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Digital Radio Mondiale [wikipedia.org] as well.
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Those are not acronyms, but initialisms (okay, RAM is an acronym). Acronyms are pronounced as they are spelled, such as S.H.I.E.L.D. Initialisms are not pronounced as a word, but stated as the individual letters that make them up, such as FBI and CPU.
This is Slashdot, let's get it right.
Acronym definition [reference.com]:
It is listed as number 2, but still valid usage of the term acronym.
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such as FBI and CPU.
I always thought it was pronounced FiBI, and SEEPOO /s
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But if you don't know American shows, why would it matter? If an English person talks about R&C kickstarter, I have no idea what the fuck they're talking about, any more than if they talk about bringing back Rhubarb & Custard.
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If we're going to be pedantic, the word you're looking for is "Initialism."
Acronyms spell things (e.g. NATO, scuba, sonar).
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http://dictionary.reference.co... [reference.com]
Read definition number 2. You are wrong, Initialism is a subset of Acronyms, not a separate set. Therefore, calling initialisms acronyms is correct usage.
Interesting how spellcheck keeps keying on initialism like I am misspelling it though...
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In case you are also wondering, MST3k stands for Mystery Science Theater 3000, an American comedy science fiction television series (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mystery_Science_Theater_3000).
It would have been good to see the acronym expanded at least once in TFS...
well THAT made me feel old, but WELCOME to my lawn!
He already has ... (Score:4, Interesting)
Cinematic Titanic [cinematictitanic.com] which also has the people from MST3K that don't hate him. As a huge fan, this sounds fishy.
There's also the much MUCH more prolific and IMO funnier Rifftrax [rifftrax.com]. The timing is interesting considering that RIfftrax just started bringing back old MST3K episodes every Monday with a new intro video by Mike Nelson [wikia.com]. I backed one of the Rifftrax Kickstarter's and I don't regret it (I even have an mp3 I made of Kevin Murphy saying my name from one of the reward tiers.
I don't really know what caused the rift between Joel and Mike/Kevin but it seems clear that there is one. Personally, while he has his moments, I don't think Joel is as funny.
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I think this comes down to if you're a Joel fan or a Mike fan.
I realize it's a group effort, Joel/Trace/Kevin vs Mike/Bill/Kevin - but a lot of us have a preference. :(
I was a fan of Kevin's lines, most than most - so I like most of the run.
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But this does bring up a question. If Joel was so unhappy and had to leave to "pursue other opportunities," why has he spent the rest of his life trying to do the same thing he walked away from? Twenty years later and he's trying to resurrect the project he abandoned.
Mike vs. Joel (Score:2)
I hope this succeeds, but honestly I like Mike Nelson more than Joel. I'd be more inclined to help kickstart one from Mike.
I really like what Mike, Kevin, and Bill have going on with Rifftrax.com. One just needs to beware that some riffs are done by people other than them, and imho aren't nearly as entertaining.
12 episodes? Isn't that half a season? (Score:2)
MST3k typically had 24 episodes a season, and part of the shtick of the series was that it was a relatively cheap production with a small crew licensing movies that cost almost nothing to show.
I get that we're motivating folks to gather together later in their career than before, and 'competing' with other opportunities they have - but if you're going to start up the engine, seems a bit of a shame to pre-plan to shut production down after 12 episodes.
Heck, given the nature of the series, you should really b
There are a lot of crappy movies to catch up on (Score:2)
Missing: Why they can finally do it now (Score:4, Informative)
Basically, Shout Factory, the people who are doing the DVDs, bought all the shows rights from Jim Mallon/Best Brains [lawrenceperson.com], " including all brand assets and global intellectual property."
$100 (Score:2)
That was a quick $100.
3 episodes? (Score:2)
The Phantom Menace
Attack of the clones
revenge of the sith
Asked and Answered (Score:2)
Oh, yeah; they also have a lot of these shitty movies in their catalog to placate the rights-holders that also own good movies.
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I recommend watching one of the following:
1. Space Mutiny
2. Pumaman
3. Soultaker
4. Werewolf
5. Pod People
6. Riding with death
7. Manos: The hand of fate
(Is it clear yet that I am a Mike fan?)
Then tell me that it is unfunny.
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Rocketship X-M was one of my favs.. sadly it was pre-SciFi and likely never will be released again.
By this time my lungs were aching for air!
Old movies on broadcast TV (Score:1)
Ah yes, those were the days. I fondly remember staying up with my friend on Friday nights and watching cheesy movies on broadcast TV -- because that was all we had way back then.
Watching a funny guy snark about a movie he is forced to watch was funny because back then we were all in the same boat. It was that or the test pattern.
Watching a funny guy snark about a movie ONLY he is forced to watch isn't as funny because -- why would you do that? What's the point again? What else is on?
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Watching a funny guy snark about a movie ONLY he is forced to watch isn't as funny because -- why would you do that? What's the point again? What else is on?
It's funny because it's _very_ funny, funnier than anyone else can do at snarking on bad movies.