The original IDEA of the movie wasn't bad. It was supposed to be moderate budget movie, have big musical numbers and action and set pieces sequences off the SOL.
They described it as their version of The Muppet Movie. The Mads go to a Mad scientist convention in Las Vegas. There's a subplot about Crow riding a motorcycle like in The Great Escape. Something involving The Amazing Colossal Man catching the SOL.
What Universal ended up agreeing to finance was...an episode of the show with a slightly higher budget.
It was really just bad timing. In the early 90s, studios were much more open to financing "medium" budget movies. 10-20 million. And about oddball stuff. There's a 1992 John Goodman Universal movie called "Matinee" that I think is a good example of what I'm talking about.
After about 1993, with smaller studios either collapsing (Orion) or getting merged into bigger companies, the movie business changed. Big tentpole movies with 50+ million budgets became the bread and butter of studios and smaller budget, riskier movies got left by the wayside and their budgets funneled into bigger projects.
So by early 95, MST the movie was only given a $2 million budget.
Had they signed with Paramount in 92, we might've gotten a movie with a scope of, say, the original Wayne's World. It might not have been to the Brains liking, but it would've been the Big Hollywood Production they were looking for.
Heck, if they'd signed with HBO for a TV movie back in 1991 (which was what HBO pitched to them at the time and got them thinking about making a movie), it probably would've turned out ok, too.
hmm... this is a little counter to the narrative that I am used to hearing from film buffs who often talk about Pulp Fiction's impact in 1994 ushering in a new prosperous age of 'independent cinema'. I always thought it was odd MST3K the movie did so poorly in the era where Kevin Smith and Tarantino were making huge waves on little money and die hard geek fandoms.
do you have any thoughts on that?