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MST3K Is Kickstarting Back To Life
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!'"
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.
BlameBillCosby.com
Please correct me if i am wrong but wasn't this thing all about some silhouette of a robot and another thing yaking it up with forced comedy commentary on old movies running in the background? Why does it cost on the high-end of tv production of $1 million per episode (or $5.5m for a full season) ? Good luck.
Without the writers, I doubt it will be the same. Unless I see evidence that they put their differences aside and work together, I won't be involved.
Peter predicted that you would "deliberately forget" creation 2000 years ago...
It would have been good to see the acronym expanded at least once in TFS...
My first program:
Hell Segmentation fault
Cinematic Titanic 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. The timing is interesting considering that RIfftrax just started bringing back old MST3K episodes every Monday with a new intro video by Mike Nelson. 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.
"I don't like it so NO ONE should like it!"
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 years ago. Bringing it back even with excellent writers won't save it.
Same with Mystery Science Theater 3000 (I am not going to abbreviate it, at it took me 10 minutes to figure out what the heck they were talking about) When it was new it was good. Today not so. You want you commentary on stuff go to sites such as channel awesome But this bringing back the things that we loved in our childhood - early adult just isn't cutting it anymore. New episodes will not have the same charm any more. Because we don't get charmed the same way any more.
As a Kid, I Loved Star Trek, as an adult, I like it on a nostalgic kick, but not in the same way. The reason why Voyager and Enterprise didn't appeal to me, isn't about bad writing direction or acting. But the fact as I got older my tastes changed, what is new and exciting became predictable. Now I may watch a new show (or even an older show that I haven't seen before) and get interested in it, but after it is done reboots and spin offs appeal less.
Mystery Science Theater 3000 Has been replaced with You-Tube commentaries. The fact that there are two Puppets giving commentary will not add much, compared to the variety of quality that we can get online.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
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/episode. That wouldn't even crack half the salaries on NCIS. (Harmon 525k, Weatherly and the rest of the main cast get 250k/ea)
Basically, Shout Factory, the people who are doing the DVDs, bought all the shows rights from Jim Mallon/Best Brains, " including all brand assets and global intellectual property."
Lawrence Person (lawrencepersonh@gmailh.com (remove all "h"s to mail)
http://www.lawrenceperson.com/
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.
Apparently GP was stuck on a satellite, and couldn't stop the movies because he built some robots.
General Relativity: Space-time tells matter where to go; Matter tells space-time what shape to be.
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.
The only thing worse than a Democrat is a Republican.
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 where I'm from so I don't really care. probably would have more value if it was nostalgic, but, mst3k is still known largely for being a show made like it is made due to having to come up with a show that had as little expenses as possible, so comparing it to something like TNG is really fucking unfair.
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.