‘Mystery Science Theater 3000’ Creator Launches Kickstarter Campaign to Bring Back Show

We’ve got movie sign!

“Mystery Science Theater 3000” creator and original host Joel Hodgson has launched a Kickstarter campaign to create new episodes of the cult classic TV show.

“With your help, we can create a new season of MST3K, prove there’s still an audience, and maybe even convince a network to bring us back for more,” Hodgson wrote on the campaign’s webpage.

The show, which launched on a Minneapolis UHF station in 1988, featured Hodgson and later Mike Nelson and two robot sidekicks as they riffed on cheesy B-movies by providing their own hilarious commentary. It then moved to Comedy Central and finished its run on the Sci-Fi Channel (now Syfy) in 1999 after 197 episodes.

“In a world where riffing has become as common as our national pastime, baseball,” Hodgson wrote, “it makes sense: like baseball, everyone knows how to play, but sometimes it feels good to just sit back and watch the original movie riffing team take a whack at it. And if we came back, imagine all the riffs we could make about things like Uber or Cards Against Humanity!”

The news was accompanied by an announcement from Shout Factory, which has acquired proprietary rights to “MST3K,” including all brand assets and global intellectual property.

The company plans to support the brand with a long-term growth strategy that entails new content development, digital media initiatives, live events, merchandise licensing programs and content syndication to international territories.

Nelson and fellow “MST3K” alums Bill Corbett and Kevin Murphy currently operate the website Rifftrax, which allows people to download comedy commentary tracks to be played along with mainstream movies like “Godzilla” and “Twilight,” as well as riffs of B-movies. At this time, they are not involved in this project.