RiffTrax recently did a poll of the Worst Movies of All Time. The clear winner: the dopey, sappy, sparkly vampire-and-werewolf romance known as... the*TWILIGHT*saga.*

And what does TWILIGHT need more than anything else?

A good Riffing, LIVE, before a massive audience in a one-night event in movie theaters nationwide.*

We want to do our Mystery Science Theater 3000-style funny commentary for TWILIGHT, broadcast LIVE over hundreds of movie screens in August 2013. This Kickstarter is to help obtain the rights to TWILIGHT for that event!

Greetings loyal Kickstarter backers and/or confused spouses who share email addresses with our loyal Kickstarter backers!

Let’s cut to the chase: we have bad news and we have great news. The bad news? We were unable to secure the rights to Twilight for our live show. (Remember, we have great news in just a paragraph or two, so don’t break out the pitchforks just yet.) We had long talks with the folks at Summit, who turned out to be very nice people and not Volturi-like in the slightest. They understood what we wanted to do and didn’t object to the idea. They just felt that the Twilight series is still very much a going concern for them, i.e. something that’s still going to earn them millions and millions more dollars, and it didn’t make sense to let a few guys crack jokes on top of it - at least not this summer. They’re probably right, dag nabbit, and they did leave the door open for us riffing Twilight in the future.

We knew this was a risk going in, which is why we were simultaneously talking with other studios about backup plans. Which brings us to the great news. We have acquired the rights to another movie for the August live show and it’s a darn good Plan B. Heck, it’s not even really a Plan B, we consider it more of a Plan A-1.5, Subsection C. For our August live show we will be riffing...

STARSHIP TROOPERS.

We’re excited about this for a number of reasons: It’s big. It’s goofy. It’s got giant bug aliens. Folks have been asking us to do this movie ever since we riffed excerpts of it on the 1998 MST3K Blockbuster Special. And IT’S FREAKING STARSHIP TROOPERS! It’s basically a cheesy 50s sci-fi flick, the kind we know and “love”, but made in 1997 with a massive Hollywood budget! NEIL PATRICK HARRIS as a psychic who talks to giant bugs! DENISE RICHARDS as a brilliant starship pilot, before she was a brilliant nuclear scientist in that Bond movie! MICHAEL IRONSIDE, because it’s a war movie, so of course Michael Ironside! JAKE BUSEY, hanging out and making it weird! This movie’s got it all!

Getting Starship Troopers is especially exciting because it’s owned by Sony. Thanks to you guys, we now have a relationship with a great big studio, which we’re incredibly excited about going forward, because of the fantastic potential. They’ve got shelves and shelves of fun, famous movies we’d love to sink our teeth into, and we can’t wait to see what doors this opens in the future. And we couldn’t have done it without you.

Now that we’ve established the title, here’s some more info about the live show:

It is going to take place on Thursday, August 15th. Once again we’ll be performing at the Belcourt Theater in Nashville. Tickets are not on sale yet, but we’ve worked out an arrangement with the Belcourt to make sure that you guys, our Kickstarter backers, get the first opportunity to buy live show tickets. We will be sending out more information as the on sale date approaches.
In the interest of full disclosure, we want to let you know that while we are thrilled to be doing Starship Troopers, working with a big studio is more complicated than how we usually do things on our own. For instance, negotiating the rights to riff a movie live in a theater is not the same as negotiating for the digital distribution rights of said live show. They are two different departments and what works for one may not work for another. We know that the digital download of the live show was one of our most popular rewards choices and are going to do everything in our power to be able to deliver the reward. But we have not secured these rights as of yet, and there’s a chance that Sony may not let us do this. Hopefully it won’t be an issue. If for any reason we’re unable to deliver the digital download, we will of course offer up what we hope is a reward that is more than a fair substitute. You will be kept in the loop as this develops, and we may even run ideas by you if we’re forced to choose a new reward.

So like we said, we feel like this is great news, and we hope you do too. We’re excited about taking on this modern alien war epic of infinite cheese, splattering the Arachnids all over the screen alongside a crew of impossibly attractive young Hollywood stars. If you have any questions, please let us know in the comments or send an email to [email protected]

And as a final note, we’d just like to thank you again for taking this journey with us. We think we’ve made something special happen here, and are excited about what opportunities it might open in the future. And we couldn’t have done it without your support.

So strap on your stompiest bug-stompin’ spaceboots, Roughnecks, it’s going to be a hell of a show