Aaaaand
it's a Kickstarter. Yay?
Joel's looking to raise $2M to make three episodes to demonstrate demand and shop around to TV stations. The goal should be easy to meet as it's already a quarter of a way there on day 1; additional money will be used to make additional episodes. Additional money past 12 episodes will be used for some live events.
EW has more:
Those who he hopes to get involved include past cast members and writers, as well as a brand new cast that includes a fresh host as well as a new mad scientist and new voices for famous wise-cracking robots Tom Servo and Crow. “Basically, I’m trying to blend the old with the new,” says Hodgson. “Mystery Science Theater has already refreshed itself once with a completely new cast, so I think it deserves to do that again. The original cast is going to be invited back to write, produce, and do cameos as their mad science characters, and then there’s a new cast with new talent.”
ETA:
Also,
Variety says that Shout! Factory has bought MST3K outright. I guess that explains the claim that Jim Mallon has divested himself of ownership with the seeming contradiction that he is still listed as the CEO of Puppets Consolidated (the former Best Brains): he still owns the company, but the company no longer owns MST3K.
AND, MEANWHILE, here's that
AMA (which I believe is still in progress as I write this).
Joel wrote:I've already talked with the actors I'd like to bring onto the show as the next host and the next Mad, and you'll meet both of them in the next few days. In fact, the next host is in the video you've already seen… but I'll give him a proper introduction. I'll introduce you to the next Crow and Servo, too. We actually shot a few videos for the Kickstarter with all of them, since there was so much we wanted to talk about. Those will be out soon, and I can't wait, because I'm really happy about all of them. I think they'll do great.
Consensus seems to be that the new host (who we only see in silhouette in the Kickstarter video) is
Jonah Ray.
ETA 2: A couple of Joel's more interesting responses so far:
He's got a breakdown of that $2M goal:
He also says,
the new Mad will be the offspring of Dr. Clayton Forrester, and the grandchild of Pearl Forrester, and therefore heir to the MST3K Experiment.
Given his gender-neutral choice of words, some folks are inferring that the new Mad will be a woman.
He's also said that, while they'll still be focusing primarily on old bad movies, some newer ones will probably make it in there too. (He has, after all, cited Final Sacrifice as one of his all-time favorites, and that's the most recent movie the original show ever did.) He's said that he intends to avoid famously bad movies (from Plan 9 to The Room), just as the original series did, because they're such predictable and well-worn choices. I think that's a good call; while I enjoy seeing Rifftrax do movies I've seen before, I've commented in the past that I always loved the
surprise that came with seeing an episode of MST3K and wondering where the fuck they dug this movie up.
Why pick a movie that's already famous when you can pick an obscure movie and
make it famous? Manos being the most obvious example.
He's also mentioned that everybody at the $100 donation level and above will get DRM-free downloads of all the new episodes they make. No word yet on DRM-free piecemeal downloads once they're done, but I wouldn't bet against it.
