LOS ANGELES -- One week after Mystery Science Theater 3000 host Joel Hodgson launched an effort to bring back the show via Kickstarter, fans have answered his call and raised more than $2 million that will fund three new episodes of the show.
But there's still work to do, says the former host.
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In an exclusive interview with Mashable, Hodgson opens up about reaching that first goal and talks about what comes next.
MASHABLE: First off, congratulations. Did you anticipate how quickly the first goal would be reached?
JOEL HODGSON: Oh, man. I have nothing to compare it to. I've never done a Kickstarter before, but it's been amazing and I'm just really grateful and happy. This is just the first goal. The real goal is to get to $5.5 million, but it shows what the fans are capable of doing in a few days.
Absolutely. But $5.5 million is a pretty big goal, considering Veronica Mars raised $5.7 million. Are you feeling good about your chances of getting there?
You know, I think so. For some reason I believe we're going to do it -- and I don't know if that's being naive, but I guess I just assumed that we'd do it. I don't know, it's so uncertain. It's very weird but pretty exciting, too.
So you mentioned on the Kickstarter page that this has been percolating in your brain for awhile now -- and admitted you had some legal issues with the rights for the show. How much time passed between your official OK and you launching the Kickstarter?
It seems like it's been about three months since they kind of shored it all up, and while we were doing that, we were wondering how to proceed. So planning the Kickstarter coincided with the MST deal, and we've been talking about that and working on that in earnest for the last two years.
During those two years, TV has changed a lot. We've seen a lot of nostalgia-based revivals. Were you worried at all that you'd miss that wave?
Well, yeah. I'm happy it seems to be a trend right when we're emerging. It's not by design, but it's really just lucky that that is happening at the same time, because we've been talking about this and working on it so long. So it's just kind of a coincidence. ... It's weird; it seems that once Mystery Science Theater closed, it got more famous than it ever was. And I think it's because people said we can just kinda look at it as this whole body of work. There's a lot you can explore. If you like it, you can binge on it for months and months.
So we have three episodes happening for sure. Tell me about the vision for those, and what your goal is with them. You've said you want them to be reinventions.
Yeah, this is not a revival show. There's a little bit of a misunderstanding there -- I think because there were only two hosts, [people think] there's this finite universe of MST3K. I'd always hoped it'd keep being refreshed, with new hosts and new people playing the robot. So that's kind of the idea -- bringing in new people to be the hosts, people to do the new robot, a new Mad. But also, having said that, we're going to invite the original cast too to be there as a resource and to do cameos and also write. It's like Doctor Who.
Tom Servo and Crow -- will they be back?
Absolutely, yeah. They're like C3PO and R2D2; they're the ones who keep living through it.
Or the Tardis.
They play the Tardis, yeah.
The RiffTrax guys [former MST3K host and writer Michael J. Nelson, Kevin Murphy and Bill Corbett] have said they're not involved with this -- but will they be invited back on a creative level?
Oh, yeah. You know, the idea is once we are funded and we know we have the money, we can go out and really make offers and we'll know schedules. I really want them to be involved. Individually, they're so much a part of the story of Mystery Science Theater. It's really important they're invited back. So yeah, I'm really into that, and I know how important it is to fans, too. I think that's the best way to proceed with something new -- to go, 'Hey, we don't want to forget the past. We don't want to forget how it got here.'
You've mentioned that you plan to stick to the look that people know but also bring it up a notch. Tell me about your plans to evolve the look of it.
Well, they were a couple of things built into Mystery Science Theater that worked really good, and that is that it appears to be a live document of a day in time. I was really careful about that; I didn't want to do a lot of post-production on the show. I wanted all the effects to be in camera, and we're seen a lot of that come around, with [the way] J.J. Abrams [did] Star Wars.
People are sort of on the other end of [the argument] that seeing everything is the best way to tell a story; sometimes just having a really solid world you're in works really good. So I want to stick with that. I don't want to go too far out with that. But I also don't want to arrest the look of Mystery Science Theater and kind of stick with what we were doing in the '90s, which at the time was really provocative. I think we can move it along a little bit further. I'm not sure if I can, but I'd like to try.
The thing I think will really protect it is that everything has to be done live. No matter what we do, it will have its own kind of charm.
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In terms of the movies you're picking: I know you said it's going to be a mix of older and newer movies, but what are your early thoughts on what the balance will be for the first three?
Well, it's one of those issues that's so out of my control that I don't feel like I can really [talk about it]. This is how Mystery Science Theater has always worked. We get what we can and do the best with what we got. That's going to be true for this, too. I think out of the 12 episodes, I maybe feel like there are three we got for sure. The rest we're in the process of acquiring. So I can't even speculate about it and how they'll be arranged and what the movies will be at this point.
As for the delivery of the actual episodes: Where are you imagining these will live?
We're open to a lot of things; it's not like we're not imagining this as a web series, unless you count House of Cards as a web series. It's like the next season of a well-established TV show, and whether it goes to a broadcast or online platform, I don't know. We just kind of want to find the best home for it.
The thing I'm most interested in is that I don't just want it to get siloed away. I want people to be able to find it, like so many people found Mystery Science Theater back in the day. I know the fans who are funding these episodes will get to see these shows no matter what, but where it will end up is one of the key things.
What are the benefits of finding a home for it on Netflix, for example, versus just putting it out on YouTube and letting people see it?
Well, to me, one thing that's really cool about a platform is that they'll promote it; you know what I mean? They'll get it to more people and get the word out and we won't have to rely completely on a street team. More people are going to discover it on television or a big digital platform than if it's just on YouTube. That's kind of the idea.
[We want] someone who's enthused about it as we are, and wants to promote it and get it out there. In some ways, Mystery Science Theater has a lot of fans, but it's never been famous. Maybe now it's supposed to be.
So now that you've crossed one goal, what's your message to fans?
It's really just "thank you." Thank you so much for what you're doing. And more than anything, it's, "Let's keep going." We'll get it there.
Mystery Science Theater has always been dependent on the fan base, going back to "Keep Circulating the Tapes." We just need them now to get us to this next level, hopefully. Now we say, "Keep Circulating the URL."
This interview has been edited for clarity and condensed.