Sleeper Redux Dept.: It’s been a while since we mentioned Mike Judge around these parts, but last week The Hollywood Reporter announced the Beavis and Butt-head/King of the Hill creator is in preproduction on his long-awaited follow-up to 1999’s Office Space. Set to star fellow Texan Luke Wilson, the film 3001 follows the presumably wacky misadventures of average Joe Bowers, who is cryogenically frozen by the military for 1,000 years only to defrost and discover a world populated by morons, making him the smartest guy on the planet. Production on the film from 20th Century Fox is slated to begin this April from a script by King of the Hill scribe Etan Coen (not to be confused with Coen brother Ethan) and Judge. Wilson is just off his writing/directing gig (alongside brothers Andrew and Owen) on the locally lensed The Wendell Baker Story, and although locations for 3001 have yet to be announced, it would surprise no one if the production ended up shooting in Austin. Judge’s other iron in the fire, also mentioned in the Reporter, is Meat in the Freezer, also for Fox, about a hunting party out to bag an 18-point albino buck. More on both as info cascades in… The Alamo Drafthouse Lake Creek has announced plans to initiate a Digital Theater Systems-captioning system for hearing-impaired moviegoers in Austin, beginning with Barbershop 2 today. The system works with a CD synced up to the projection system, which reads the time-code on the film and projects captions on the screen via a separate video projector, with captioning moving slightly onscreen to ensure legibility. Nifty? Indeed, and that’s not all: The Alamo Drafthouse Downtown is working with InSight Cinema to bring in open-captioned films in the near future. More detailed information on the Alamo’s new services, including updates on upcoming DTS films, is online at www.drafthouse.com/online_tix/sigs.asp?id=21.
This article appears in February 6 • 2004.