If you haven't heard of Mike Judge's film Idiocracy, starring Luke Wilson, you're not alone. Fans and critics are baffled by the lack of promotional effort from 20th Century Fox. The setting is a dumbed-down America hundreds of years in the future.
Mr. ROBERT KOEHLER (Variety critic): The studio - they had absolutely no belief in this film whatsoever.
PATEL: Variety critic Robert Koehler says studios don't always roll out extensive publicity campaigns for new theatrical releases, but with Idiocracy the neglect is noticeable.
Mr. KOEHLER: You know, it's thought now that the studios are really more into the marketing business than they are into the movie business. In this case, whether it's a compliment or not to the film, all the expense was poured into the movie and not at all into the marketing.
PATEL: Here's where I would've played a sound clip from the movie. Clips routinely come in press kits. Studio publicity departments send them to us and Jay Leno and practically everyone else with an FCC license. Nothing came for Idiocracy.
Mr. KOEHLER: When you open a film without a proper communications plan, it's almost as though it's guaranteed to fail.
PATEL: USC Professor David Whitzman(ph) worked in movie advertising at Fox when they released Star Wars in 1977, and he's astonished that Fox this time didn't even circulate a trailer for Idiocracy. It's never happened in his 40 plus years in movie marketing. In his experience if executives felt a movie was going to tank, they wouldn't spend tens of millions of dollars on marketing...
Prof. DAVID WHITZMAN (Film, USC): But even in those cases, we gave it support. We certainly prepared materials for it. We certainly tried to get the public interested in seeing it. If not, why put it out there at all?
PATEL: The why may be that the studio was contractually obligated to release Idiocracy in theaters before releasing it on DVD. Fox or director Mike Judge declined to comment for this story. Fox will only say the film is in limited release, though it's not open in New York where almost every other limited release movie does screen.
