Emerald City Video

Michael J. Nelson, Kevin Murphy, and Bill Corbett are returning to make four new episodes of Mystery Science Theater 3000 this year. The trio, who have been doing an MST3K-inspired project called Rifftrax for 20 years, just launched a crowdfunding campaign for MST3K: The RiffTrax Experiments, which is already fully funded.

Of course, that’s not too hard, since the Rifftrax team only asked for $20,000 to do the job — a huge step down from the millions prior Mystery Science Theater 3000 campaigns raised. Nevertheless, it’s impressive that in its first day, the Rifftrax campaign has raised over $700,000 already.

After a series of increasingly expensive seasons made for streaming, Mystery Science Theater 3000 finally seemed to have exhausted its audience goodwill when its last Kickstarter campaign failed to reach its campaign goal back in 2024. Hosted by its own, bespoke subscription app, Mystery Science Theater 3000‘s planned fourteenth season would have cost $4 million to make, but managed to earn just under $3 million in bids after moving from Kickstarter to its own site to minimize fees.

After generating a ton of buzz on Kickstarter, Mystery Science Theater 3000: The Return ran two seasons on Netflix before being cancelled and heading to The Gizmoplex, creator Joel Hodgson’s own app and website.

Joel, who returned to his jumpsuit during the Gizmoplex season, doesn’t seem to be directly involved with The Rifftrax Experiments, with Nelson and Rifftrax saying in their campaign that they are teaming with Shout! Studios, who handle MST3K‘s home video releases, for the project.

Hodgson’s Alternaversal and Radial Entertainment — the parent company of the Shout! brand — had acquired the rights to Mystery Science Theater 3000 in 2015, setting the stage for the Netflix seasons. Last week, Radial announced it had acquired Hodgson’s share of the rights. Hodgson will reportedly remain involved as a “brand ambassador.”

“I’ve been incredibly lucky to spend my adult life making a living as an entertainer, and MST3K has been a big part of it,” Hodgson said at the time. “Creating your own comedic art form like MST3K is deeply fulfilling and fun — but that doesn’t mean I’m required to work on it every day for the rest of my life. This move feels like the best way to encourage MST3K to find its future, while I find mine, including the chance to focus on some new and different projects with fewer moving parts.”