Bob and Justin's Mad Movie Blog

My name is Bob. My friend Justin and I are aspiring filmmakers and we have pretty similar tastes in movies. This will include our take on what's going on in film and television today as well as updating you on the status of our own work.

Thursday, August 31, 2006

What a bunch of Idiocrats

Tomorrow, "Idiocracy," the new film from Mike Judge, opens in limited release in cities such as Austin, Los Angeles, Chicago, and Houston among a few others (no, Seattle and San Diego are not among them this weekend). It's a sci-fi comedy about Pvt. Joe Bowers (Luke Wilson), a regular Joe who wakes up in the future and discovers that he is the smartest man on the planet. The world has gotten progressively (and aggressively) dumber. It's going to be a huge flop.
Why? What, is their bad buzz? Is it a known turkey? Is Tom Cruise in it? The answer to all of these questions is no. Quite simply, there is no buzz, there's no trailer, there's been no advertising of any kind save one poster I've seen at one theater. Foxmovies.com doesn't even acknowledge the film's existence. My question is, is this pure stupidity (which as we all know could very well be the case given that we're dealing with Hollywood marketing people), or does Fox have some strange vendetta against Judge? Granted, "Office Space" tanked at the box office (my dad and I are among the twelve people who can actually say, "Yes, I saw it on the big screen") but it exploded on DVD. I think it's safe to say that it has more than made its money back for the studio by now. So why then is Fox behaving this way? It's absolutely baffling to me. The whole plan right now seems to be, "Let's release the movie and just not tell anyone." I mean chances are you'd never even heard of "Idiocracy" before you stumbled across this. It's like a master class on how NOT to market something. Mike Judge deserves better.
So if anybody out there sees it this weekend let me know how it is. Meanwhile I'll keep my eye out for a wider release.

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