Nearly two decades later, Luke Wilson is surprised by the following his cult satirical comedy Idiocracy (2005) still has.
The actor recently admitted that he’s “always pitching” co-writer/director Mike Judge on a sequel to the film, which starred him and Maya Rudolph as two people mistakenly left in cryosleep for 500 years, awaken in an era when the average human intelligence has decreased so much that Wilson’s Private Joe Bowers is now the smartest man in the world.
“Oh, I always call Mike and tell him,” Wilson told Business Insider of his interest in a sequel. “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.”
After 20th Century Fox mysteriously pulled the movie from wide release, it grossed only $495,652. Idiocracy has since developed a cult status, frequently brought up as an increasingly relevant satire amid elections and spreading of disinformation. Many have compared Crews’ clueless President Camacho to President Donald Trump.
Wilson said the movie “might be the biggest surprise” of his career when it comes to his most enduring roles among fans.
Terry Crews and Luke Wilson in Idiocracy (2006) (20th Century Fox/Courtesy Everett Collection)
“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,” he explained. “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.”
Wilson added, “So I was so surprised when it became popular. It is the movie that gets brought up the most to me. Not just election time but over the years. It’s really special because it was something that couldn’t be denied despite a studio putting the hammer down on it.”
In 2012, Crews also told Movieline he continues to “badger” Judge about a potential sequel, and they’d even met with Fox about making a web series for President Camacho. He’s revived the character on several occasions over the years.