Mike Judge and Alec Berg of Silicon Valley are teaming together again, this time for a film called Automated Trucking. Silicon Valley, their first collaboration, aired on HBO for six seasons and received critical acclaim throughout. Judge co-created the show, and they both acted as showrunners and executive producers, as well as writing and directing episodes.
Judge made his name with the MTV cartoon classic Beavis and Butthead, which debuted in 1993, right at the dawn of raunchy, adult animation. His live-action career was launched with the workplace satire Office Space, which starred Jennifer Aniston in her early career and has now become a cult classic. Berg’s popularity has risen as a result of his work on the action comedy series Barry, which is about to enter its fourth and maybe final season. Berg, on the other hand, has been a mainstay in Hollywood for years, having been a member of the Curb Your Enthusiasm and Seinfeld producing and writing teams.
According to Deadline, the plot of Judge and Berg’s new film Automated Trucking revolves around a junior developer who has created a driverless transport software program. Following a proposal to a tech billionaire, the engineer is partnered with a long-haul trucker on a cross-country trip to assess the idea’s practicality. Their destination is the International Truckers Expo, where the engineer intends to demonstrate his program to visitors. Judge, who directed Office Space, is set to direct the film. Only Rob Turbovsky and Matteo Borghese of Murders in the Building will pen the script.
How Judge Uses Technology to Narrate a Story
Because technology makes communicating, exploring, and fact-checking much easier, dramatic irony in which characters are convincingly ignorant is more difficult to conjure. Consider that if Jerry had an iPhone, most Seinfeld episodes would have been resolved in the first act. However, Judge and Berg have both proved their capacity to overcome the narrative obstacle posed by the digital era. Silicon Valley was obviously about technology, its culture, and the sinister forces within it, with plenty of jokes thrown in, many of which were directed at popular character Dinesh (Kumail Nanjiani). It’s one of the rare shows where the characters are as addicted to screens as the audience and isn’t afraid to criticize Big Tech.
With Automated Trucking, this technical reality will be on display once more. Because self-driving cars are a very realistic part of the technology sector’s conversation, the premise is fairly plausible. Tesla, Elon Musk’s electric vehicle firm, has announced a number of beta programs for completely autonomous driving, as well as the robotaxi brand Cruise has carried passengers on short, local excursions in San Francisco without drivers running the cars. Autonomous driving will revolutionize travel, but there is currently little creative literature depicting how that change will look and feel. Judge and Berg’s Automated Trucking could fill that void.
Source: Deadline