Up All Night’s head writer details launch of new network
Up All Night isn’t just back — it’s expanded into a full Roku channel.
“We felt like there was a lot more that we could do,” Up All Night head writer Matt Maestro told Wicked Horror. “We just knew that there was a lot of untapped potential to do more stuff with the show and fans really wanted to see more classic content — and there were other shows as well, we have a great animated show called Meat the Carvers, those guys have been also very instrumental in helping set up the Roku channel.”
The all new Up All Night network officially launches on Roku on April 17.
“We’ve been getting flooded — absolutely flooded — with links and people offering their stuff,” Maestro added. “Movies, short films, podcasts, all types of stuff. The reception to it’s been kind of overwhelming, actually.”
If you grew up in the ‘90s and had expanded basic cable, Up All Night needs no introduction. The late night USA network program ran for ten seasons and tallied more than 900 episodes.
Rhonda Shear and the late Gilbert Gottfried anchored the weekend staple, which offered viewers a bounty of B-movie favorites and genuine genre classics.
“That’s really what the bread and butter of the show has always been,” Maestro said. “Sexy, fun comedies, whether that’s horror or just campy comedies, that’s really always been what’s kept the engine of Up All Night going.”
The actual filmic content of the show varied immensely. One week you could get a steady diet of Friday the 13th sequels, the next you could get any number of (heavily edited, of course) Troma classics. Odds are, if you saw fare like The Bikini Carwash Company II or Beach Babes from Beyond without your parents’ approval and/or knowledge, you probably saw it first on Up All Night.
A blast from the past
Maestro was a teen during the old-school Up All Night run.
“It was appointment viewing,” he recollected. “I’d go to the mall Friday night with my friends, come home, watch Kids in the Hall, then watch Up All Night with Rhonda.”
Maestro isn’t alone. Indeed, channel surfing between Gilbert Gottfried and Headbangers’ Ball was practically a rite of passage during the Sega Genesis and Crystal Pepsi years.
The movies may have been a crapshoot thematically, but the wrap-around material for Up All Night was classic, always dependable sketch comedy television. Some nights you’d watch Gottfried trade banter with a shopping mall elf, other times you’d see Shear — just as famous today for her work on the Home Shopping Network and launching her own intimate apparel brand — give Jason Voorhees a makeover.
Dormant for a quarter century, Up All Night — once again hosted by the iconic Shear — was resurrected on the Kings of Horror Youtube channel in 2025.
The film line-up was about as diverse as it gets, with everything on tap from found footage horror romp Hell House, LLC to the Jean Claude Van-Damme actioner Lionheart to *both* Assault of the Party Nerds and its sequel.
“We’re really going to try and lean into the campy sex comedies,” Maestro said. “The edict of the show is ‘sexy fun.’”
The guest stars on the previous season ran the gamut from Emmy award winner Kerry McNally to music virtuoso John Brennan. And of course, you had appearances from numerous contemporary scream queens — such as Mel Heflin and Jessa Flux — alongside horror legends like Linnea Quigley, Tiffany Shepis and Felissa Rose.
“Sometimes we are the draw and the movie is just kind of ancillary,” Maestro said. “People like to see the movie, but they tune in for Rhonda.”
He pinpointed his personal highlight from the previous season of Up All Night.
“Probably the Valentine’s Day Slumber Party Olympics episode, I think that’s the one that feels the most like the old show,” he said. “And I know a lot of people liked the nerd makeover episode.”
As for the Roku channel format, Maestro said viewers can expect a bevy of short horror and comedy films, full-length indie movies and even “fake” trailers and parodies of those ubiquitous 1-900 hotline commercials from the ‘80s and ‘90s.
In a video announcement for the new channel, Shear said the network already has more than 400 movies lined up. She described the platform as something of a “Sirius station” for everything she (and her devoted fan base) loves in the realm of cinema, retro TV, comedy and music.
The Roku era of Up All Night, Maestro said, will maintain the classic style and format of the venerated series.
“Once we go back into production next month we’re going to keep to the same schedule that we had on YouTube, where it was every other week,” he added. “That’s the goal right now.”
Entering the Roku era
The debut episode on Roku, Maestro promised, would be “a lot of convention fun.”
And you can expect plenty of parodies on deck as the new season unfurls.
“You’re going to see a lot of scripted comedy,” Maestro said. “That’s the way Rhonda wants to go — it’s one thing to be sexy and campy like that, but we also want to do it with a little bit of intelligence.”
Maestro said the “eye candy” aspect of Up All Night is apparent. But he notes the show is anything but superficial.
“We want to present a well rounded, entertaining show,” he said. “Rhonda has saved every bit of tape, every episode, every little thing that she’s done, she’s posted it on her YouTube channel. Which was an invaluable resource for writing the show.”
Maestro’s own career goes all the way back to the ‘Web 2.0’ explosion of the mid-2000s — when YouTube was still in its infancy and streaming online content had yet to conquer the planet.
“I was working for a production company called Broderville and we were doing a lot of short-form content for a website called Heavy.com and we started doing a show that was sort of a cross between The Daily Show and SportsCenter called The Burly Sports Show,” Maestro said. “And eventually that was syndicated on CBSSports.com and We even won a Webby Award in 2008 for best sports show.”
From there Maestro produced more short-form content for Viacom, did integrated marketing work for The Discovery Channel and even wrote some pilots for MTV. One of his continuing segments, titled What’s Good, aired on MTV2 for several years.
Then came Mondo Creepy, the centerpiece for horror hostess Lilith Von Bloodworth (a.k.a, actress Jennifer Welsh.)
“The idea of doing a horror host show really stuck with me,” Maestro said. “I always considered Mondo to be a spiritual successor to Up All Night. So whenever we would post a new episode or air any content from it, I would always tag Rhonda.”
When Shear expressed interest in rebooting Up All Night, Maestro did not hesitate in reaching out to her.
“Within 20 minutes I get an email from Rhonda,” Maestro recollects. “Saying ‘call me.”
The rest, as the old adage goes, is history.
The next generation
“Rhonda was never just a horror host,” Maestro said. “You definitely can’t say Vice Academy and things like that — or Hollywood Hot Tubs, for instance — those are not horror movies.”
Maestro said he’s watched enough vintage content to basically have a master’s degree in the science and art of Up All Night.
“I’ve watched so many of those episodes,” he said. “So I really got the format of the show, the cadence, the timing to a certain degree. So all I really needed to do was just kind of update the references.”
Maestro said he didn’t feel “pressure” to live up the vaunted Up All Night legacy — more of a responsibility to do the namesake proud.
“Most of the ideas come from her,” he said of Shear’s immense influence. “I’m just there to really execute and of course, I’m always adding stuff on top of it … she’s keenly aware of what the show is, what the show should be and what the audience wants.”
Depending on the guests, Maestro said he leaves considerable room for improvisation in certain bits.
“I’ll do the actual lead-in jokes, I’ll set the scenario, sometimes I’ll have a specific thing they have to do,” he said. “But I’m very conscious of giving certain performers leeway … when you have great performers, you know that your material is in good hands.”
The future is now
At this point, Maestro said he believes “Web TV” pretty much is television.
“Let’s be honest, regular, traditional TV is dying, most people are watching their television through an app on an internet-connected device,” he said. “You see YouTube, people are putting out documentaries that are four hours long that get a million and a half views, it’s a totally different world now.”
Maestro laid out his “endgame” for the new channel.
“To get as many eyes on it as possible, to maybe partner up with a network at some point,” he said. “Or another big streamer, like a Tubi or something like that.”
One of the secrets to the Up All Night formula, he said, is that the humor never relies on narcissism or negativity — just good vibes and the guarantee that you’ll laugh during the segments in between the films themselves.
“I am most excited about people taking the entire experience of the channel — we’re hosting the party and we’re inviting a lot of other people to be a part of it,” Maestro said. “I am all about, especially in the indie horror community, the rising tide lifts all ships, I’m a big believer in that philosophy.”
Ultimately, Maestro said he aspires to “energize” the up and coming filmmakers already producing their own movies or populating YouTube with original content.
“And also, having some of those people bring their content to the show so that we can make more great episodes of Up All Night,” he concluded.