Office Space
1999 film directed by Mike Judge

Office Space is a 1999 American satirical black comedy film written and directed by Mike Judge. It satirizes the office work life of a typical 1990s software company, focusing on a handful of individuals weary of their jobs. It stars Ron Livingston, Jennifer Aniston, Gary Cole, Stephen Root, David Herman, Ajay Naidu, and Diedrich Bader.
Office Space was filmed in Dallas and Austin, Texas. It is based on Judge's Milton cartoon series and was his first foray into live-action filmmaking. The film was Judge's second full-length motion picture release, following Beavis and Butt-Head Do America. It was released in theaters on February 19, 1999, by 20th Century Fox. Its sympathetic depiction of ordinary information technology workers garnered a cult following within that field, but it also addresses themes familiar to white-collar employees and the workforce in general. It received critical acclaim but was a box office disappointment, making $12.5 million on a $10 million production budget; however, it sold well on home video, and has become a cult film.
Several aspects of the film have become Internet memes.
The public source identifies “Office Space” as 1999 film directed by Mike Judge. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Office, Space and film.
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This entry incorporates text from “Office Space” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.