Without getting too political here, it’s easy to point out the similarities to Mike Judge’s Idiocracy and some of our current society. Look, there’s a reason it was re-released ahead of the 2016 election. So do we really need a sequel? Luke Wilson thinks so!
Luke Wilson recently told Business Insider that he is constantly pitching the idea of an Idiocracy sequel to Mike Judge. “I always call Mike and tell him. He’s always busy and always working on a script. But I’ve always told him, how about me and Terry Crews and Dax Shepard coming back to the present day. We see Terry’s Camacho character become president, Dax’s character runs a movie studio. I’m always pitching that to Mike. He gets a kick out of it.”
We can give credit to films like 2001, The Truman Show, Network, The Terminator, and so many others for predicting certain elements of our modern society: technology, reality TV, ratings grabs, AI, and so on. But perhaps no other movie was such a surprise in doing so than Idiocracy. It all seemed so, well, idiotic at the time, but the parallels are definitely there.
On its legacy, Wilson added, “Idiocracy might be the biggest surprise. It seemed like such an odd, funny movie, and I like Mike Judge so much and knew him from Austin. Mike has such a great offbeat sense of humor, and I thought things were funny, but I didn’t know if it would translate. And Fox wasn’t really giving him the money for the effects and set pieces. I’ll never forget I was reading the LA Times before the movie opened, and I saw a small ad that said Idiocracy, and only three theaters were listed. So I called Mike Judge, and he told me the studio dumped the movie. I was bummed out.”
It really took a long time for people to come around on it. Idiocracy was never out on more than 130 screens and it peaked at #43 on opening weekend — even behind Over the Hedge, then out for four months! In total, it would take in less than a half million dollars worldwide. But once it hit DVD, things changed for Idiocracy, finding the sort of cult audience that Mike Judge thrives on.
What do you think? Would an Idiocracy sequel be worth it? Give us your thoughts in the comments section below.
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