Luke Wilson would reprise his Idiocracy role as Joe Bauers in a heartbeat.
The actor, who starred alongside Dax Shepard, Maya Rudolph and Terry Crews in the original 2006 movie helmed by Mike Judge, recently told Business Insider that he’s “always pitching” sequel ideas to the filmmaker.
“Oh, I always call Mike and tell him,” Wilson said. “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.”
Idiocracy centers on Bauers, a decidedly average American, who is selected by the U.S. Army for a top-secret hibernation program but is forgotten. He wakes up 500 years later to a future so incredibly moronic that he’s easily the smartest person alive.
The Legally Blonde actor added that the cult satirical comedy was probably the “biggest surprise” of his career, as it’s still beloved by so many today. Especially since 20th Century Fox ended up pulling it from a wide release, leaving it to earn less than $1 million at the box office. However, that didn’t stop the film from finding its audience.
“It seemed like such an odd, funny movie, and I like Mike Judge so much and knew him from Austin,” Wilson said of Idiocracy. “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.”
The No Good Deed star continued, “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. 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.”