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Television Movies Sci-Fi

Netflix Cancels Rebooted 'Mystery Science Theatre 3000' (forbes.com) 80

Posted by EditorDavid from the bosses-didn't-like-him dept.
Netflix's reboot of Mystery Science Theatre 3000 made this year's "Best Of" lists from both The New York Times and Rotten Tomatoes. Yet apparently their bosses didn't like them, and have shot them into space.

Forbes reports: In a controversial move poisoning Thanksgiving for many indie comedy fans, Mystery Science Theater 3000 host Jonah Ray tweeted that Netflix has cancelled the young reboot after two seasons... The reprise of Mystery Science Theater 3000 -- whose maiden incarnation made hordes of fans airing on Comedy Central and Syfy throughout the '90s -- ran on Netflix for two seasons and 20 episodes beginning in 2017 after a record-breaking Kickstarter campaign by creator Joel Hodgon fueled its return.

"We don't know what the future holds for the show," Ray added in a later tweet, "it always seemed to figure out how to survive. From Comedy Central to Syfy. Then kept alive by RIFFTRAX & Cinematic Titan. Whatever happens, I want everybody to know that getting a chance to be on this show was a dream come true." Shortly after news of the show's cancellation, Hodgson tweeted reassurance to fans that he'll look to revive the series elsewhere....

Earlier this month, Shout! Factory TV announced the debut of an MST3K Twitch channel that unspools the series and promises to feature "related programming...." Fans can also turn to Pluto TV's 24/7 MST3K channel to gorge on the series pre-Y2K catalogue (1988-99).

The MST3K staff is also currently on a sprawling 60-plus city tour that will stretch into March 2020. In 2008 Joel Hodgson, the show's creator, answered questions from Slashdot readers. "I've been a fan so long, I can't even remember when," posted CmdrTaco. "I've been shuttling my MST coffee mug from desk to desk for like 15 years now, so I'm pretty pumped that he'd waste your time with us."

In a gracious note this week, Hodgson emailed fans that "We've had a wonderful time working with the Netflix team, and will always be grateful to them. After all, they gave us the opportunity to spend the past few years aboard the Satellite of Love, and made it possible for new generations to discover the joys of riffing cheesy movies with your friends..."
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Netflix Cancels Rebooted 'Mystery Science Theatre 3000' More

Netflix Cancels Rebooted 'Mystery Science Theatre 3000'

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  • Granted they put out a few singular items that are great, but the vast majority of their "Original Content" is pure crap. The MST3k reboot was one of the few items I enjoyed watching. And of course they went and killed it, while churning out a slew of higher budget pieces of shit they couldn't pay me to watch. Sure, Disney+ might not seem like competition right now, but considering they have 30 original titles coming out this year alone, they will soon be offering up far more original content than just the

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by _xeno_ ( 155264 )

      Granted they put out a few singular items that are great, but the vast majority of their "Original Content" is pure crap. The MST3k reboot was one of the few items I enjoyed watching. And of course they went and killed it, while churning out a slew of higher budget pieces of shit they couldn't pay me to watch.

      The other issue is that with very rare exceptions, even if a show ends up being good, Netflix kills it after a two or three seasons, generally without warning. Apparently Netflix has one metric and only one metric they care about: shows that get new people to subscribe and then binge watch. If a show brings in new subscribers who then watch it over the course of a month, even if they watch the entire thing, that doesn't count. Only if they binge entire seasons at once.

      Netflix evidently has no concern about

      • Disney is the king of three seasons and done. The longer a show goes on, the more the actors can demand.

        Why do you think Robert Downey, Jr., is getting so tiiiiiiiiiired of playing Iron Man. Well, I guess one more time.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by rtb61 ( 674572 )

        They will all pillage each others streamers and people with brain simply rotate. I am thinking changing very six months, seems pretty good, so a year off from any streamer, and watch two other streamers for six months each before going back, or even longer.

        This who idiotic grap that people will only watch one streaming service or pay to watch many at the same time, is just marketing bullshit. The majority will wise up and simply rotate through the service and binge watch what ever TV content and through so

    • Granted they put out a few singular items that are great, but the vast majority of their "Original Content" is pure crap. The MST3k reboot was one of the few items I enjoyed watching. And of course they went and killed it, while churning out a slew of higher budget pieces of shit they couldn't pay me to watch.

      Netflix isn't like broadcast TV or even cable TV where they're guessing what you're watching. Because their viewers have to request the content which is streamed to them, Netflix knows exactly what s

  • I was one of the people who Kickstarted it. I wanted it so bad.

    Then they announced they were going to be on Netflix, which I don't have and can't afford, and the cast was going to include scummy socjus darlings. Felt very betrayed, never watched it. I've heard only bad things about it from friends that did.

    • Re:Good. (Score:4, Informative)

      by skam240 ( 789197 ) on Saturday November 30, 2019 @11:07AM (#59470682)

      For someone who claims they love the show you act awfully upset for someone who never watched it. There's really no social justice theme in the new show unless you consider having a women in the cast is as such.

    • Why do people Kickstart things? There is plenty of investment money available for this kind of junk.

      • Real investors want A.) control and B.) results, and usually demand contracts to that effect before letting go of any cash. No such accountability or responsibility towards "investors" is required via Kickstarter.

    • Didn't you get to download the show as a backer?
      BTW, Netflix didn't even show it here, they probably couldn't be arsed to secure the rights for the movies in my country. I missed the kickstarter but got my fix off the Pirate Bay, of course after donating to the Riffers.

    • To be blunt, you sound like a fucking idiot.

      On the kickstarter itself, you needed to be at the $85 tier to get the episodes as digital downloads. What did you think would happen if you didn't donate that much? That they'd air on PBS? All the episodes would immediately go on youtube?

      If you can't afford $13 to spend a month watching it on Netflix, you can't afford to kickstart it. At least that $13 is a guarantee that you'll get to see it. (And it comes with more movies and shows than you could watch 24 hrs a

      • I'm disabled, you fuckface. $13 a month is a big deal. I didn't pitch in at the $85 tier because the way this sort of thing is usually done, and I distinctly remember them *talking about this at the time,* is that the stuff is released cheap or for free after some delay. It's not like I threw ten cents at them expecting to get a physical product. I just expected to not be locked out of anything at all. Netflix effectively bought something I should've had access to out from under me.

        • Netflix effectively bought something I should've had access to out from under me.

          No, they didn't. You shouldn't have access, because you didn't pledge $85. $85 was the price for access. That was and still is clear as day on the kickstarter page. (Personally, I that's stupid expensive, and that alone would have turned me off from supporting this.)

          "...released cheap or free after some delay" is still in the future. But if you didn't sign a legal contract specifying either cheap or free, or what that delay is, you're SOL.

          Kickstarter is very much a "I have disposable money and I know this m

    • Am I the only one who thought this show terrible from day one? The idea was great -- simulate a kibitzing audience.

      It just didn't have enough humor to carry you through what were terrible movies. So you sat there bored at a terrible movie where 29 of 30 comments added nothing.

  • I've always been a big fan of MST3K and thought that some of the Netflix ones were some of their funniest ones.

    I've found though that it is very much a love it or hate it show. Some people just do not find any humor in it. Personally though, I love making fun of grade b movies and find they can be a lot of fun in that context, especially with some friends and a bong. MST3K was exactly that all in one neat package.

    • I never watched the new ones but to me the original series was hit and miss. Sometimes the jokes just weren't there and I got bored, but sometimes they were on fire. I inherited a bootleg dvd collection of the entire series that I'm slowly getting through, but it's not nearly as funny as I remember (then again I was in college when it was originally on and humor changes). Some things you just can't bring back as they were dependent on the zeitgeist of their time. In addition now YouTube is full of peopl
      • Give the new ones a try; season 11 was good. The old ones were indeed hit and miss, but in some cases it was the movie just not doing it for me (and for them, I guess...).

        You might also want to check the "successor" to MST3K: Rifftrax if you haven't already, especially their "just the jokes" riffs on big blockbusters are all kinds of awesome: LOTR, Star Wars, Star Trek, Harry Potter and many others. Sadly they don't do many of those any more, I guess because these got pirated too much. Since they only

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by skam240 ( 789197 )

        I agree, there were definitely good and bad episodes. As some one else has already posted the new stuff is pretty consistently good though.

  • Queue slow theme music (Score:5, Interesting)

    by kaoshin ( 110328 ) on Saturday November 30, 2019 @12:22PM (#59470848)
    To tell the truth, MST3K never was the same without Joel Hodgson. No offense, but the other eras are kind of like watching Timothy Dalton play the part of James Bond. I just recently took my family to see the MST3K LIVE tour showing the movie "No Retreat, No Surrender", and it was really funny.
    • That's a fair statement. I'm not sure exactly why Joel went "off the rails" and I even watched his solo project which was pure garbage. It wasn't the same after he left but two thirds of the writing team is still there and it has remained quite watchable. They have been cancelled before...several times actually. They will be back.

    • To tell the truth, MST3K never was the same without Joel Hodgson. No offense, but the other eras are kind of like watching Timothy Dalton play the part of James Bond. I just recently took my family to see the MST3K LIVE tour showing the movie "No Retreat, No Surrender", and it was really funny.

      Eh. I first saw episodes with Mike, and I was unimpressed when I caught up with some Joel. Matter of taste I guess.

  • Kickstarter backers funded the entire 11th season (Netflix didn't even pick it up until it was almost fully made). Netflix "renewed" it for the 12th season, but at 6 episodes, and failed even fully fund those 6 episodes so that MST3K had to do a "pledge drive" to cover the gap.

    So Netflix actually paid for ~4 episodes of MST3K, while getting to claim and reap the rewards of 20 episodes. It was clear from the moment season 12 was announced that this would not be a sustainable relationship.

  • to replay old 1950's & 1960's era sci-fly movies while some robot toys are used like puppets while a couple guys make silly comments about the movie, an added 100 bucks per movie?

    • Licensing, I'd assume? In the age of perpetual copyright, does anything require the copyright holders to offer fair, reasonable licensing fees? The copyright holders (I assume Disney, if not now then soon...) might be asking for a lot more when they know it's Netflix doing the publishing rather than just some guys doing a labor of love.

      We also can't discount the possiblity that Netflix, a company well-known for shooting themselves in the foot and then doing a press release about what a great decision they j

    • Depends. How lame are their silly comments, and how many takes does it take to get to where they have a single reel of clever or funny comments?

      If they're like most of slashdot, you're going to need hundreds of takes, and a lot of editing. A whole building full of people.

  • Oh no, how will we ever survive :[
  • MST felt really off this go around. I actually get excited to watch a new BoTW.
  • I loved the show in the 90s and I didn't even know there was a reboot. Life moves on, I guess.

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