MST3K Returns: RiffTrax Team Reunites for Four New Experiments
The old movie-mocking crew is back in the theatre seats. Mike Nelson returns with robot puppets Tom Servo and Crow T. Robot for four new episodes titled Mystery Science Theater 3000: The RiffTrax Experiments.
The premise is simple. A hapless host is trapped in space and forced to watch terrible films, while he and two robots talk back to the screen. That formula powered the original Mystery Science Theater 3000, or MST3K, which aired from 1988 to 1999, mostly on Comedy Central and the Sci-Fi Channel, according to Variety.
The show was created by Joel Hodgson, who starred as host before leaving mid-run. He was replaced by Michael J. Nelson. After the original run ended, Nelson teamed with fellow cast members Kevin Murphy and Bill Corbett to launch RiffTrax, a separate joke-over-movies project.
That split shaped the next two decades. In 2017, Hodgson revived MST3K at Netflix and later launched the streaming platform The Gizmoplex without the RiffTrax team. In January, Hodgson sold his ownership in MST3K to Radial Entertainment and departed. Radial then recruited the RiffTrax team to return.
It is a homecoming. Nelson, Murphy and Corbett had not been formally involved in any new version of MST3K since 1999. They return in their original roles both on screen and behind the camera.
Fans paid for it directly. A Kickstarter campaign, meaning fans pledged money upfront to fund production, raised $2.7 million for the revival. RiffTrax also used the campaign page to share production updates with backers.
Production moved to Minneapolis. The new episodes were filmed at the Cinequipt production facility, where Variety visited the set in May. The crew includes familiar faces. Director of photography Jeff Stonehouse, props master and puppeteer Patrick Brantseg and costume designer Beth “Beez” McKeever all returned.
Two more originals came back too. Trace Beaulieu and Frank Conniff, both writers on the early series and major on-screen and off-screen presences, rejoined for The RiffTrax Experiments.
The rollout mixes cinemas and digital. Experiment 01 is Sting of Death, with a runtime of 1 hour 30 minutes, according to RiffTrax. It played in theatres nationwide on 9 and 13 September. Tickets for the cinema screenings were sold online through Fathom Entertainment, according to Fathom Entertainment.
The series run is scheduled to begin on 9 October. Episode two features the film Deathsport and will debut on 23 October, according to Variety. All four episodes are being offered together as a digital bundle pre-order, slated for release on 16 November 2026.
For fans, this means closure on a long divide. One team made the jokes famous. Another team kept the brand alive. Now they are the same show again.
