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Show creator Joel Hodgson is looking to bring back the show by having started a Kickstarter campaign for production. (It's about time!)
But there's a snag. Actually two or so snags but not too big that cannot be overcome by faithful fans.
Joel needs to meet his funding deadline by December 12th.
Joel's minimum goal is $2M, which will net us three new episodes.
At $3.3M, six; at $4.4M nine, and if he were to get $5.5M, he could give fans an entire season of 12 episodes of the riffing we've all come to love.
Anything over the $5.5M mark and Joel would be looking to shoot some of the shows live in front of some lucky studio audience.
Then of course, in his usual mode of humor, Joel Hodgson said that, "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's how the show rolls.
The steep price for the project can be accredited to a few important aspects of the show: Joel is recasting characters and getting (paying for) the rights to play a movie and rip it can cost some big bucks.
But be it as it may, now that Joel can once again legally pursue a revival of MST3K, he's at it with the crowdfunding avenue.
I remember when someone pointed me to this show many years ago and I did not remember laughing that hard ever. MST3K would take an old NOT classic film, something that bombed bad or screened with a massive amount of mediocrity, then he placed a silhouette of a human and a few robots in front of the screen as the movie played, as if they were sitting in a movie theater, and they would talk through the movie, ripping various aspects of it.
MST3K on Amazon
And it set a trend of riffing to this day.
"Once upon a time, a television series called MYSTERY SCIENCE THEATER 3000 was born. We debuted on Minneapolis' KTMA, local television, on Thanksgiving Day 1988, as the world was in the final throes of Teddy Ruxpin-mania. That was almost thirty years ago, but for some reason, people still seem to like the show – it’s a mitzvah!
Our show has had a long, strange run. Across a UHF channel, a cable network, cancellation, a feature film, then another cable network, the show lasted for 12 years, two generations of hosts and puppeteers, 2 Emmy nominations and a total of 197 episodes before we got canceled again for good in 1999. Sadly, it was just as Prince predicted."
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On the crowdfunding page, he says that since the show had such a strong cult following, he believes he can revive the series again. And the crowdfunding project would prove that. And once he got the series off the ground with this initial investment, he hopes he could angle the direction of the series in such a way that a network would pick it up from there and run with it. HELLO, Syfy?
He signs off the call for help with,
"Back in the day, every episode of MST3K ended with a message that encouraged fans to “Keep Circulating the Tapes.” And you guys did.
Those grassroots efforts helped MST3K find friends and fans at a time when the rest of show business didn’t quite know what to make of us. It was social media in its most primitive form... and because of you, it worked.
Today's, it's time to update that phrase for the internet age. If you're with us, this is your call to action, MSTies."
KEEP CIRCULATING THE URL, BringBackMST3K.com.
And to "follow us on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. (Apparently those matter more than Nielsen ratings, now!)"
http://facebook.com/mst3k
http://twitter.com/mst3k
http://instagram.com/mst3k
But most importantly:
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/mst3k/bringbackmst3k
Oh, and why do I think Joel will be meeting his goal? Because between the time I started writing this piece and finished my rough draft, the number of contributors went up by 103.
So when I started tracking over a period of time of just a few hours I saw that 719 folks (AKA Awesome MST3K Fans) chimed in with over $85k and the tally at last check, had climbed up over the $1M mark.
MST3K has awesome fans and I think Joel is on his way to achieving at least his minimum goal!
8,490 - $985,401
8,544 - $1,000,223 (11/11, 8:35 am)
9,209 - $1,070,569 (11/11, 11:14 am)
SHARE THIS article to help Joel meet his goals. Or just share the links. Our day is coming once again!!!
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