Lawrence Person's Futuramen

MST3K creator Joel Hodgson has launched another MST3K Kickstarter to help fund the show that was dropped by Netflix after two seasons. Their minimum goal is $2 million for three more episodes (which I think they’re going to breeze past today), with stretch goals out to $5.5 million for 12 episodes (plus 12 short films).

Plus something called “The Gizmoplex,” which he describes as “an online theater for live screenings & special events!”

1. Live Premieres & Events: Each month for our first year, The Gizmoplex will host at least* one live event, where you can join me, our cast and writers, and some special surprise guests. Each live event will be like a night at the theater, and will have a lot of fun surprises. Our live events could include new sketches, trailers (done “MST3K style”), live Q&A panel discussions, interviews, contests… even the return of the MST3K “viewer mail” segment.

2. The MST3K Watch Club: To make it easier to watch MST3K with your friends, The Gizmoplex will also be the official home of the MST3K Watch Club! Each month, you’ll get on-demand access to a new selection of episodes, and the ability to host your own live screenings for up to 10 people! Anyone with a Gizmoplex Pass can join for free, and if you want to invite someone who doesn’t, they can get a “Day Pass” for just $0.99!

And, if we reach our stretch goals, the Gizmoplex Pass will get even more valuable!

3. Gizmoplex Apps: If we raise $3.3 million, we’ll be able to develop apps that bring The Gizmoplex to mobile devices and TVs! Right now, the plan is to include apps for six of the most popular platforms: iOS, Android, AppleTV, AndroidTV, FireTV and Roku. Like Crow says: we’re gonna conquer cyberspace, man!

Also: “I really want The Gizmoplex to feel like something new: less like another Netflix with nothing but MST, and more like a charming, off the radar, suburban cineplex that plays movies for 99 cents, long after their first run.”

Though not stated, the ad campaign suggests they’re keeping the Season 11 and 12 cast, and Jonah Ray appears in the Kickstarter video.

There’s also some interesting discussion of the economics behind the show and Kickstarter:

1. Without a network supporting us, we need to fund everything ourselves. During our first Kickstarter, we estimated that, once production was up and running, we’d be able to produce new episodes for about $250K each. In the end, though, the budget for each new episode ended up being closer to $350K. For the last two seasons, we were able to cover the difference through our deal with Netflix… but this time, we’re on our own. We’ve got a lot of ways we can keep the budget lower, but, you know… it’s still going to cost something. And when you think about it, $350K for 90 minutes of television is still one of the best deals in show business.

2. We still can’t spend everything we raise on Kickstarter to make the show.

Campaign Fees: Between Kickstarter and the credit card processor, we pay about 8% of your pledge in fees. There’s also a fee for CrowdOx, the platform we’ll use to manage all of your surveys and rewards after the campaign ends.

Making Rewards: We reserve about 20% of your pledge in order to design, produce, print, sort and pack all of your rewards. And that’s not even including shipping, which we’re not collecting until after our Kickstarter campaign ends!

Dedicated Support: During our first Kickstarter, we underestimated the amount of work involved in providing customer support and creating detailed backer updates, so we had to depend on volunteers to do a lot of it. This time, we want to make sure we’re prepared, so we budgeted about 4% of each pledge for that.

Building & Running The Gizmoplex: We really want The Gizmoplex to be great, but getting it started will take some work – and keeping it running also means we’ll have some monthly fees to cover. We also need some budget to support all of the special live events we’re planning to host. So, we’re using about 3% of your pledge for that.

When you put it all together, we have to spend about 35% of what we raise just to cover Kickstarter expenses, and to keep all the promises we’re making to you.

He thinks that if they do 12 episodes, per episode cost will be down to just under $300K.

You may remember that MST3K already had the biggest Kickstarter in history up to that time. It’s since been surpassed by several smart watches and board games, among other things.

Despite the caveat that “this might not be a good time for some people to offer financial support to a robot puppet show dedicated to cheesy movies,” I expect them to blow the doors off the totals of their last Kickstarter.

Naturally I’ve already pledged.

Update: Just ticked over the first goal of $2 million.