Kickstarter Q and A on Reddit More at the above links. Mike and Trace have already indicated they won't be involved.
Trace is involved in another project, so that's not surprising. Mike has RiffTrax and that probably offers him a bit more freedom.
Yeah, Mike made a comment on Facebook that basically boils down to "RiffTrax is my baby, and as much as I loved MST3K I really just worked there."
The first funding goal has been met! And Jonah Ray is to be the new host. Apparently he's on Comedy Central and a podcast, neither of which I pay attention to.
There has been some speculation that Felicia Day will play the new Mad. Apparently she's very popular, has said she's a fan of the show, and fits the outline in the banner image? We went ahead and pledged $35. First time I've helped Kickstart anything.
Turkey Day Marathon time! Over halfway to the $5.5 million goal, over 25,000 backers, and the status is: new host is Jonah Ray new Mad is Felicia Day new Crow is someone called Hampton Yount (who sounds the part) new Servo is someone called Baron Vaughn new henchman is ??? nothing yet about Gypsy, Magic Voice, or Cambot I believe in Crystal Light because I believe in me people pledging $35 or more now get six classic MST3K episodes in digital form, in addition to whatever else is listed Three episodes are in the bag. Six episodes look very probable. Nine episodes should be quite doable. It's hard to judge the odds of getting a full twelve because my brain keeps conflating the end of the campaign with the end of the month.
The new henchman: Oh, and Gypsy was in the background of one or two of the Turkey Day spots, but she didn't say anything. Also, it's up to six episodes now.
Three more days to get in on this if you want to! To make this thread less boring, a few of my favorite bits from the show:
With all the names announced for writers, artists, or effects (both Rick and Morty, a Simpsons writer, a guy who wrote music for Frozen, the Adventure Time guy, Adam Savage, the list goes on), well . . . Mark Hamill as Gypsy is looking a lot more plausible. Having a few veterans back is nice, too!
This livestream has been so MSTy. Lots of great moments when the mikes are functional and the stream is up. All heart and strapped for tech.
1. The goal was twelve episodes. Somehow, we raised over $6.3 million for thirteen episodes plus a holiday special! 2. This was the biggest film/TV Kickstarter and the ninth-biggest Kickstarter yet, in terms of funds raised. I would have liked to get to 50,000 backers, but we got close. 3. He wasn't perfect, but Joel (and Shout!) did a really good job coaxing the funding they wanted out of this thing. And the core of fans who relentlessly pushed exposure on social media, or wrote articles on Serious News Sites, were a big part of the success. And it didn't hurt to have a few big names pop up in support . . . really, everything just came together really well. 4. The livestream at the end was, in the words of so many, a glorious trainwreck. The WF-relevant bit would be Dana Gould doing what it says on the box:
Also Pearl, Bobo, and the Observer will guest-star, and Bill Corbett and Mary Jo will also help write. Watched Manos last night. It's amazingly shoddy, certainly, but I still think Red Zone Cuba is more painful.
Manos is consistently entertaining. It's an MST3K classic. Red Zone Cuba is fun to watch once or maybe twice, but I can't watch it over and over. And as snobby as it may sound, being in black and white doesn't help it.
Oh, I wasn't talking about the riffing, just the movies themselves. Manos is talentless and budgetless, but Red Zone Cuba actively hates humanity.
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/mst3k/bringbackmst3k/comments Backer reviews of the first episode are glowing.
Basically a lot of things are unchanged, a lot of arrows kept in the show's quiver, and I'm happy to see them. And a lot of things are changed, and changed well to where either it's definitely an upgrade or I'm quite happy to see what they do with it. And a lot of funny. Just a couple of things that really bothered me enough to merit mentioning. One is a stylistic issue that I was getting used to by the end of the episode anyway, and the other, again, I'm willing to wait and see what they do with it, and whether maybe it's just First Installment Weirdness.
I just watched the first episode, it was really funny. I'm still getting used to the new voices for Crow and Tom Servo.
This time with spoilers! Episode 1 Episode 2 The first episode is just a great episode. It's pretty well got everything. They ran through nearly all of the standard MST bag of tricks. Second episode needed some weeding out of lesser riffs but was otherwise fine, and we got a nice cameo segment.
I know the show is about crappy movies, but my god, Cry Wilderness is one of the crappiest movies I've ever seen.
It's just terrible. I thought it must have been written by an 8-year-old . . . but would you believe the writer had won a writing Oscar for a previous movie? So maybe one of the directors was eight years old, and told everyone to act as if seen through an eight-year-old's eyes. This is my least favorite episode so far, out of the first five, but the other four have all been winners. And next is Starcrash!
Cry Wilderness is just terrible (in an entertaining way, aside from the little brat running away every time he's told to stay put), and the episode is my least favorite of MST3k S11 so far . . . but there were people talking in the room during most of it, so I'll have to see it again to pass proper judgement. Apparently, for example, I should have looked closer at the cereal boxes during the raccoon skit.
Watched it again, no background noise, I caught more of the jokes. It's good. Starcrash is a nuts movie. It's a Star Wars ripoff without any plot cohesion. They did a good job riffing it, but the cameo wasn't the person I was expecting. It's still all good. Meanwhile, Netflix is using the bots to promote the show itself and other Netflix shows.