Yeah a lot of bad movies are better as Rifftrax or if the audience is high. I think Twilight is one that substances don’t help but the commentary does. I haven’t checked recently if it holds up mind you, I’m due.
Every time they said, “Line!” It killed me.
I don’t care for the films (though my wife loves them) but holy crap, watching that movie as a Rifftrax is sublime.
Now the total is over $1.25 million. I hope they use some of this bounty to license “better” bad movies.
we’ve watched a TON of Rifftrax. I’m a big fan of the educational films and shorts. Bridget & Mary Jo have been riffing a bunch of films on their own under the Rifftrax brand and they’re pretty sharp, they don’t rely on the pop culture references quite as heavily as the Mike, Kevin & Bill riffs. I’m looking forward to seeing these guys back on the SOL making the puppets move, I think their stripped-down, just the basics aesthetic will be refreshing after the increasingly Byzantine agglomeration of effects, guest stars, backstory, and extraneous fluff the recent MST3K reboots were becoming. The continuing-story host segment plots of the later SciFi Channel seasons- “welcome to Roman times!” - seemed sparse in comparison.
Let me preface by saying that the MST/RT guys have done several successful crowdfunding ventures in the past and I’m confident they’ll come through here with a product as promised. I’ve been a fan since the tape-trading days of college and this isn’t about them.
That said, fundraising goals on Kickstarter are bullshit. You place a “goal” of maybe 5% of your actual goal so you get a couple of things: First, you get a “Funded in 20 seconds!!” style badge on your campaign from Kickstarter. Along with that, you get the “7000% Funded!!” style badge as well. Both of those build all sorts of hype and momentum. People are much more likely to fund something that seems quickly attainable and safe so seeing a low (but still reasonable looking) goal or an overfunded target makes people think “This will happen, is happening and I want in”. Seeing a high realistic goal makes people think “Eh, it probably won’t get its $800,000 anyway; I’ll come back”. Then they move on, forget and never come back.
Again, this isn’t a slap at this specific Kickstarter campaign, this is just how the hype and optics game is played on that platform. It helps that most people have no idea what media development (or manufacturing) costs so a number like $30,000 seems reasonable to them when it’s actually way under the real cost. It’s also why people who follow the platform for things like games, books, software, etc often see projects fail despite being “600% funded”. Being 1000% funded doesn’t actually mean having 100x the money you needed; it might mean you barely met your internal goal.
This is very true. I have seen many board games cancel their crowdfunding because they see they are not making enough to make the product even though they are “Funded in five minutes!!!”
The quickstarter is showing over $1,800,000 now.
Kevin Murphy and Bill Corbett get reacquainted with their puppet alter egos.
What is up with Joel on this iteration? Is he getting residuals or something?
I don’t think so, because he sold his rights last month, which probably paved the way for this.
Radial Entertainment Completes Purchase of ‘MST3K’
January 15, 2026
Radial Entertainment, the entertainment company formed from the merger of Shout! Studios and FilmRise, has obtained full ownership over the “Mystery Science Theater 3000” brand from creator Joel Hodgson’s Alternaversal.
“MST3K” had been jointly owned by Alternaversal and Shout! Studios since late 2015. Radial’s purchase includes all brand assets and intellectual property and follows nearly two decades of Shout!’s multichannel distribution of “MST3K” content. The amount of the final buyout was undisclosed.
Most minor bump, but since the Kickstarter officially ended today 16MAR2026, the final (still goes up in dribs, perhaps for people backing but not for rewards) sits at $2,677,322.
Yes, I agree with others upthread that the original goal of $20k was probably deliberately low, but the figure above’s still a hefty amount to produce the episodes, hand out the rewards, and serve as proof of interest for more.
Looking forward to the new Experiments with all my fellow Rifties!
Bump.
Just got back from watching the first episode of MST3k: The Rifftrax Experiments in theater tonight (09SEP2026). The Experiment was “The Sting of Death”, and oh god was it a terrible movie, deserving of the treatment. For anyone who’s seen the Rifftrax film “Octaman” - it seemed a reasonable premise in scifi compared to this! Story, timing and plot (if you can call it that) holes so bad I was talking with my hands at the screen.
Still, a solid MST3k episode, not one of the best, far from the worst, with some jokes hitting hard, and others less so. Cast seen - Mike, Crow, Servo, Pearl, Brainguy and Bobo. Fewer host segments, but one (short) musical number, and it’s worth staying through the end of the credits. It even has a fan-mail segment!
Did we need to pay to see it in the theater? Well, no. But it was fun for the wife and I.
No worries if you didn’t see it in early, limited release, IIRC the Digital/online version is coming out in one month!
This is a plus for me, as I always hated the original Mike -era host segments. I’m looking forward to checking this out when it gets to streaming.
Agreed. I always thought the host ‘skit’ segments were kind of silly. Just riff, damn you, riff like the wind! That’s why I kind of prefer RiffTrax- it’s all about the riffing, other than the occasional brief joshing around in between segments that mostly happens on the live RiffTrax episodes.
Speaking of RiffTrax, I just checked their website and they’re taking pre-orders for The RiffTrax Experiments videos. Not cheap, I have to say: just a hair under $60 for all 4 movies in a package deal. And that’s non-HD; HD runs even more. I mean, $15 per movie is not too bad compared to tickets for two in a movie theater, guess. And I want the guys to get paid for all the riffing goodness they provide, so I’ll probably break out my credit card and pay up at some point this Fall.
I’ll have the HD videos (wife is a huge backer), so I won’t have to worry about that.
For the record, on the movie version just released there was a skit/segment upfront about the experiment restarting (a bit longer), Riffing of the movie complete with silhouettes, a brief intermission with a skit, and a closer along with some ending and post credits bits including the fanmail. So more than Rifftrax, but nothing like the “ongoing story” of the later eras, or the Netflix and following eras, much less the live events.
That’s cool that your wife is a big backer!
Appreciate the clarification of the skit-to-riff ratio. But, just to be clear, I didn’t ever downright hate the skits, I just enjoy the riffing more. And yeah, some of those skits in the later era of MST3K did seem to go on way too long. Made me wonder how much of the movie they cut for time, to fit all those skits in.
Some of those movies deserved every cut. So much filler - rock climbing, driving there, driving back, getting into the car, getting out of the car just to name a few mocked in various seasons of the show.
And we’ve been Misties since we started watching in college, around the time of the Joel/Mike transition, so, it’s been a part of our adult lives for decades. 