1985–1997: Early science career; musician; animation and Beavis and Butt-Head After graduating from
UCSD in 1985, he successfully held several brief jobs in physics and mechanical engineering, but found himself growing bored with science. a startup
video card company with about 40 employees based in
Santa Clara, California. Disliking the company's culture and his colleagues, Judge quit after less than three months, describing it as, "The people I met were like
Stepford Wives. They were true believers in something, and I don't know what it was". Shortly after quitting his job, he became a
bass player with a touring
blues band. He was a part of
Anson Funderburgh's band for two years, playing on their 1990
Black Top Records release ''Rack 'Em Up'', while taking graduate math classes at the
University of Texas at Dallas. He was planning to earn a master's degree as "a back-up plan" to become a community college math teacher after relocating to the north Dallas area for his then-wife's new job. In 1989, after seeing animation cels on display in a movie theater, Judge purchased a
Bolex 16 mm film camera and began creating his own animated shorts in his home in
Richardson, Texas. In 1991, his short film
Office Space (also known as the
Milton series of shorts) was acquired by
Comedy Central, following an
animation festival in Dallas. Shortly thereafter, he dropped out of school to focus on his career. In the early 1990s, he was playing blues bass with
Doyle Bramhall. In 1992, he developed
Frog Baseball, a short film featuring the characters
Beavis and
Butt-Head, which was to be featured on
Liquid Television, a 1990s animation showcase that appeared on
MTV. The short led to the creation of the
Beavis and Butt-Head series on MTV, in which Judge voiced both title characters as well as the majority of supporting characters and wrote and directed the majority of the episodes. The show centers on two socially incompetent,
heavy metal-loving teenage wannabe delinquents,
Beavis and
Butt-Head, who live in the fictional town of Highland, Texas. The two have no adult supervision, are dim-witted, sex-obsessed, uneducated, barely literate, and lack any empathy or moral scruples, even regarding each other. Over its run,
Beavis and Butt-Head drew a notable amount of both positive and negative reaction from the public with its combination of lewd humor and implied criticism of society. Judge himself is highly critical of the animation and quality of earlier episodes, in particular the first two –
Blood Drive/
Give Blood and
Door to Door – which he described as "awful, I don't know why anybody liked it ... I was burying my head in the sand." The series spawned the musical single "
I Got You Babe" (1993) (a humorous cover with participation by
Cher), the feature-length film
Beavis and Butt-Head Do America (1996) and the spin-off show
Daria. After a hiatus of two decades, the series aired a new season on October 27, 2011. The premiere episode was a ratings hit, with an audience of 3.3 million total viewers. On January 10, 2014, Judge said that there is still a possibility that
Beavis and Butt-Head could be pitched to another network, adding that he wouldn't mind making more episodes.
1997–2009: King of the Hill, Office Space, and Idiocracy In early 1995, after the successful first run of
Beavis and Butt-Head, Judge decided to create another animated series,
King of the Hill. Judge conceived the idea for the show, designed the main characters, and wrote a pilot script.
Fox was uncertain of the viability of Judge's concept for an animated comedy based in reality and set in the American South, so the network teamed him up with
The Simpsons writer
Greg Daniels. Judge voiced characters
Hank Hill and
Jeff Boomhauer. The show is about a middle-class Methodist family named the Hills living in a small town called Arlen, Texas. It attempts to retain a naturalistic approach, seeking humor in the conventional and mundane aspects of everyday life while dealing with issues comically. After its debut in 1997, the series became a large success for Fox and was named one of the best television series of the year by various publications, including
Entertainment Weekly,
Time, and
TV Guide. For the 1997–1998 season, the series became one of Fox's highest-rated programs and even briefly outperformed
The Simpsons in ratings. Although ratings remained consistent throughout the 10th, 11th and 12th seasons and had begun to rise in the overall
Nielsen ratings (up to the 105th most watched series on television, from 118 in season 8), Fox abruptly announced in 2008 that
King of the Hill had been canceled. The cancellation coincided with the announcement that
Seth MacFarlane, creator of
Family Guy and
American Dad!, would be creating a
Family Guy spin-off called
The Cleveland Show, which would take over ''King of the Hill's'' time slot. Hopes to keep the show afloat surfaced as sources indicated that
ABC (which was already airing Judge's new animated comedy,
The Goode Family) was interested in securing the rights to the show, but in January 2009, ABC president Steve McPherson said he had "no plans to pick up the animated comedy." On April 30, 2009, it was announced that Fox ordered at least two more episodes to give the show a proper finale. The show's 14th season was supposed to air sometime in the
2009–10 season, but Fox later announced that it would not air the episodes, opting instead for syndication. On August 10, 2009, however, Fox released a statement that the network would air a one-hour
series finale (which consisted of a regular 30-minute episode followed by a 30-minute finale) on September 13, 2009. The four remaining episodes of the series aired in syndication the week of May 3, 2010, and again on
Adult Swim during the week of May 17, 2010. During the panel discussion for the return of
Beavis and Butt-Head at
San Diego Comic-Con in 2011, Mike Judge said that no current plans exist to revive
King of the Hill, although he would not rule out the possibility of it returning. Judge began to develop one of his four animated short films titled
Milton, about an office drone named Milton that Judge created, which first aired on
Liquid Television and
Night After Night with Allan Havey and later aired on
Saturday Night Live. The inspiration came from a temp job he once had that involved alphabetizing purchase orders and a job he had as an engineer for three months in the San Francisco Bay Area during the 1980s, "just in the heart of
Silicon Valley and in the middle of that overachiever
yuppie thing, it was just awful". Judge sold the completed film
Office Space to
20th Century Fox based on his script and a cast that included
Jennifer Aniston,
Ron Livingston, and
David Herman. In addition, Fox did not like the
gangsta rap music used in the film until a focus group approved of it. Judge hated the ending and felt that a complete rewrite of the third act was necessary. Beginning in fall 2003, Judge and fellow animator
Don Hertzfeldt created an animation festival called "
The Animation Show". "The Animation Show" toured the country annually for several years, screening animated shorts. In 2005, Judge was presented with the
Austin Film Festival's Outstanding Television Writer Award by
Johnny Hardwick. Judge has made supporting and cameo appearances in numerous films. Judge had a voice cameo as Kenny in
South Park: Bigger, Longer and Uncut (1999), the feature-length film adaptation of the popular
Comedy Central series; he voiced
Kenny McCormick when he was unhooded towards the end of the film. He later acted in the science-fiction family comedy franchise
Spy Kids, where he played Donnagon Giggles in the first three films. His next film appearance was
Serving Sara (2002) where he played a motel manager. He later appeared in the comedy
Jackass Number Two (2006), in which he can be seen during the closing credits. An extended version of his sequence can be seen in
Jackass 2.5 (2007) which was a
direct-to-video release. Judge also created a video clip of Beavis and Butt-Head ripping into
Steve-O for his video
Poke the Puss, where the two try imagining if they would like the video better if they were black. The clip aired as a part of
Jackassworld.com: 24-Hour Takeover, a February 23, 2008, television special on MTV to coincide with the official launch of jackassworld.com. The characters appeared again in the third Jackass film, titled
Jackass 3D, at the beginning of the film, telling viewers to put on their 3D glasses for the film. Judge's third film,
Idiocracy, a
dystopian comedy starring
Luke Wilson and
Maya Rudolph, was given a
limited release theatrically by
20th Century Fox in September 2006, two years after production. The film's original release date was intended to be on August 5, 2005, according to Mike Judge. In April 2006, a release date was set for September 1, 2006. The film was released without a
trailer or substantial marketing campaign. The film was not screened for critics beforehand as is usually done. Lack of concrete information from Fox led to speculation that the distributor may have actively attempted to keep the film from being seen by a large audience, while fulfilling a contractual obligation for theatrical release ahead of a DVD release, according to Ryan Pearson of the
AP. That speculation was followed by open criticism of the studio's lack of support from
Ain't It Cool News,
Time, and
Esquire.
Times Joel Stein wrote "the film's ads and trailers tested atrociously", but "still, abandoning
Idiocracy seems particularly unjust, since Judge has made a lot of money for Fox." In the U.S., the film was released to DVD in January 2007 and later aired on
premium-television,
multiplex channels
Cinemax in September 2007 and
HBO in January 2008. Since then, it has gained a
cult following.
2009–2013: The Goode Family, Extract, and other projects Judge's fourth directorial effort was 2009's
Extract. Shortly after completing
Office Space, Judge was already about 40 pages into his follow-up script, set in the world of an extract factory, when he was convinced by his representative team that he needed to shelve that and concentrate on something more commercial. Over the next several years, he focused his energy on developing
Idiocracy. But years later, by the time of the film's release, audiences had decided that
Office Space had struck a chord, so they were ready to see Judge return to on-the-job humor, and thus the
Extract script was given new life. Seeking to keep
Extract below the radar of the studio system, Judge and his producers set up a production company, Ternion Productions, and arranged private financing while partnering with Miramax for domestic distribution of the film. Judge relied heavily on his own personal knowledge of the industrial world to bring the story to life. "I actually worked in a factory a little bit myself ... I hopefully write stuff that is recognizable as the archetypes of this world," Judge stated. The film premiered on September 4, 2009, and received mixed to positive reviews from critics and was a minor commercial success. Judge's third television series,
The Goode Family, debuted on ABC but was canceled after one season. Comedy Central first aired the series in reruns on January 4, 2010. However, the series was pulled off the schedule shortly thereafter. It was confirmed on
The Goode Family Facebook page that Comedy Central had picked up the reruns of the series, which were to be evaluated for a chance of being renewed for a second season. On August 8, 2009, however, ABC Entertainment President Steve McPherson stated that the show, along with
Surviving Suburbia, had officially been canceled due to low ratings. In 2010, reruns of
The Goode Family aired Monday nights at 10 pm on
Comedy Central, beginning January 4. It departed the network's primetime schedule after four weeks, returning occasionally in low-trafficked timeslots. In 2012, Judge directed the music video (animation by
Titmouse) for
country music group
Zac Brown Band's "
The Wind". In 2013, Judge collaborated with
Seth MacFarlane on a mashup episode of
Family Guy, in which, complete with a
Hill-themed opening, Judge reprises his role as Hank Hill. Earlier in 2010 and 2012, Judge played cameos as Hank on two episodes of MacFarlane's
The Cleveland Show.
2014–2019: Silicon Valley and Tales from the Tour Bus Judge created his fourth show,
Silicon Valley, with
King of the Hill executive producers
John Altschuler and
Dave Krinsky. The HBO comedy is a
single-camera live-action sitcom set in Northern California. One of its main themes is the idea that "the people most qualified to succeed are the least capable of handling success". The first season of
Silicon Valley was 8 episodes long and received critical and public acclaim.
Silicon Valley was renewed for a second season on April 21, 2014, and a third season on April 13, 2015.
Silicon Valley aired its fourth season, which premiered on April 23, 2017. The series was renewed for a fifth season, which premiered on March 25, 2018, and a sixth season, which premiered on October 27, 2019, and served as its final season. On January 12, 2017,
Deadline confirmed that
Cinemax ordered 8 episodes of Judge's new animated series,
Mike Judge Presents: Tales from the Tour Bus. The series premiered on September 22, 2017. Judge wrote the story for
Action Point, the film was released in 2018. In 2018, he starred in the film,
The Front Runner. In 2019, Judge announced he had been developing two projects for
HBO:
QualityLand and
A5, both of which were later scrapped by HBO in 2021.
2020–present: Bandera Entertainment, Beavis and Butt-Head and King of the Hill revivals In June 2020,
Comedy Central announced it had ordered a second revival of
Beavis and Butt-Head consisting of two new seasons along with spin-offs and specials. In the new series, Beavis and Butt-Head will enter a "whole new
Gen Z world" with meta-themes that are said to be relatable to both new fans, who may be unfamiliar with the original series, and old. In February 2022, it was announced that the revival would instead premiere on
Paramount+, following a second
Beavis and Butt-Head feature film entitled
Beavis and Butt-Head Do the Universe. Originally, Paramount executives wanted a live-action
Beavis and Butt-Head movie. Judge held auditions over
Zoom for the project. He eventually talked the company into doing an animated movie instead to reestablish the characters first, with a future live-action movie still a possibility. In June 2022, it was confirmed that new episodes would debut later that year, along with the full library of over 227 original episodes, newly remastered, with music videos intact. One month later, it was announced that the revival would premiere on August 4, 2022. Season 9 continues the concept of the Beavis and Butt-Head multiverse initially explored in
Beavis and Butt-Head Do the Universe. Teenage Beavis and Butt-Head, Old Beavis and Butt-Head, and Smart Beavis and Butt-Head all get their own dedicated episodes in the revival. In January 2022, it was announced that Judge and Daniels had formed an animation company called
Bandera Entertainment, with a revival of
King of the Hill being one of several series in development. During a panel at
San Diego Comic-Con in 2022, Judge stated that the show "has a very good chance of coming back." In September 2022, Fox Entertainment president Michael Thorn confirmed that the series would not air on Fox, with the reason being that Fox prefers to have full ownership of whatever new shows they air. On January 31, 2023, a revival on
Hulu was officially confirmed to be ordered. Bandera's first produced series is
Anna Drezen's
Praise Petey starring
Annie Murphy,
John Cho, and
Stephen Root among others. The series premiered on July 21, 2023, on
Freeform and
Hulu, and has received mostly positive reviews, with
Rotten Tomatoes ratings of 80% Fresh from critics, and 90% Fresh from audiences. The series was canceled after one season. In 2024, Judge, along with
Zach Woods and Brandon Gardner, co-created the series
In the Know. The series premiered on January 25, 2024, on
Peacock. Judge also produced the
Netflix animated series created by
Matthew Inman and Shane Kosakowski, entitled
Exploding Kittens. Based on the
popular card game of the same name, it was released on July 12, 2024 to mixed to negative reviews. It was cancelled after its only season. His new show,
Common Side Effects currently airs on Adult Swim and is streaming on
Max. ==Personal life==