majorjoe23

Trevor

Some of the tiers went quick. I went with the signed poster just in case I never meet the guys in person.

Trevor

This was strangely synchronous. As a big MST3K fan, this time of year makes me often think of Marooned, aka Space Travelers, the late 1969 Gregory Peck and Gene Hackman film that to date is the only Oscar-winning film riffed by the show. I watch the episode/film pretty much every February for the DVDTalk Academy Award Challenge. So today, the day of the Oscars, I’m watching Roma, the film set in 1969/1970 and expected to win best picture and other awards tonight, and darn if there isn’t mentions of and a big scene of them watching Marooned in a theater.

So, in a roundabout way, Joel and the bots are sorta possibly winning an Oscar tonight!

majorjoe23

Obi-Wanma

Ok, I guess I'll throw in my annual buck now.

majorjoe23

Netflix is swapping out the current set of classic episodes on March 15 with a new set of classics. I'll be curious to see which episodes they choose.

majorjoe23

majorjoe23

majorjoe23

majorjoe23

majorjoe23

Trevor

Darn, I was hoping for the full 10,000 backers and all those upgraded rewards. I haven’t looked at the numbers, but maybe the return of MST3K has eaten into Rifftrax’s support a bit?

Obi-Wanma

Maybe people are getting tired of contributing every year. I mean, it's great if people want do do it, but really if you have to ask your fans for money every year, then you don't have a successful business model.

We also used to get extra live riffs that we didn't have to back, and we don't get those anymore.

Jay G.

Here's all the Rifftax Kickstarters, starting in 2013:
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects...-in-theaters-n
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects...-in-theaters-n
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/rifftrax/rifftrax-live-2015-the-crappening-we-riff-the-room
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects...e-chasers-live
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects...arty-and-myste
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects...tiny-and-krull
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/rifftrax/rifftrax-live-2019-three-great-movies-riffed-live

The first three years they got around $250,000-$265,000 from 4000-6000 backers. The 2016 MST3K REUNION was the high water mark, with over $600,000 and 11,000 backers. In the years since that's dropped a bit, but this year was still the second highest amount earned, with $540,000, even with only 8600 backers.

The funding, especially for the first few years, seemed primarily about getting money upfront to pay the licensing fees for some notable Hollywood blockbusters.I think recently they just include the entire year's spate in the listing, even if they don't need advance money for licensing some of the titles, because it may include the likelyhood someone will want to see one of them and fund the Kickstarter. For example, for this year, maybe they needed the funding primarily to license Star Raiders, but what if someone didn't want to see Star Raiders? Well, their spate includes Octoman and the Giant Spider invasion, so if they include those in the listing, that person may fund the Kickstarter for those instead, even though I doubt the licensing fees are high for those.

As for going without an annual Kickstarter, they probably could, but without riffing the bigger movies Live. I'm guessing the bigger movies pull in a bigger audience, but probably not enough that they create enough profit to cover the licensing fees for the next big movie. So they're stuck in a bit of a perpetual loop, where they get funding in advance to riff a bigger movie or two, riff them and make a profit, but not enough to license another big movie, so they have to get advanced funding for that one, etc. It probably also doesn't help that the bigger movies are more or less "theater only" with two screenings. They apparently never get permission to release the live show recording on home video (licensing costs would be higher), and I don't think the "just the jokes" mp3s sell as well as their DVDs or VOD releases.

majorjoe23

majorjoe23

coyoteblue

I got my shipping notice for the blu set, yesterday, too. No word about the episodes in (non-physical) digital format. I'll check vhx tonight and see if anything new pops up.

milo bloom

I guess I missed this, did they clear some more episodes? The last box of classic eps I bought had that disc with all the host segments because they thought they couldn't get anymore. Has something else broken loose?

majorjoe23

dhmac

I actually attended the live performances in Nashville TN on April 17th & 18th but just realized that the live telecast on August 15th conflicts with my trip to LA so I'll probably miss it.

majorjoe23

dhmac

https://mst3klive.com

I missed last year's MST3K live show (the one with "Deathstalker II") so decided I'm definitely going to this year's "MST3K Live: The Great Cheesy Movie Circus Tour" when it's at the Hard Rock Cafe live in Orlando.

Instead of dealing with Ticketmaster and their ticketbastard ways of gouging with excessive service fees (nearly the cost of an entire ticket when buying a pair), I just went down to the venue and bought tickets directly from the box office with $0 in additional fees. (The fact that I already needed to go there for another reason made the trip a complete win-win.)

Obi-Wanma

Prices for this tour seem way more reasonable than their previous two tours.

dhmac

Yeah, I like the prices on this tour. I even splurged a bit to get 2 balcony seats with their own table instead of regular auditorium seats because the price wasn't that much more.

My only disappointment is getting "Circus of Horrors" instead of "No Retreat, No Surrender" in the movie rotation on the night I'm going because I'd much prefer seeing '80s martial arts cheese starring Jean-Claude van Damme over old, slow-paced British horror.

majorjoe23