The South by Southwest Film Festival announced Tuesday that Observe and Report will screen in a Centerpiece slot on Monday, March 16. The comedy stars Seth Rogen as a mall cop who gets in a skirmish with the local police force. Sounds an awful lot like this movie coming out on Friday, but my bet is that Observe will be much better.

Rogen and the rest of the Judd Apatow Mafia are developing quite a relationship with the festival. Two years ago, the Apatow-directed, Rogen-starring Knocked Up had its world premiere there in the Paramount Theater in Austin, generating a ton of buzz for a film that went on to earn more than $150 million that summer. Then last year, Forgetting Sarah Marshall, also produced by Apatow and starring another of his discoveries, Jason Segel, showed early at SXSW and AFI Dallas.

This year, Observe and Report will screen a few days after the festival’s opening night film, I Love You Man, starring Segel and another of Apatow’s frequent players, Paul Rudd.

The festival also announced the addition of a few panelists. Among the new names are director Catherine Hardwicke (Twilight), Austin filmmaker Robert Rodriquez and King of the Hill creator Mike Judge.

The film portion of SXSW runs March 13-21, and you can tune into this space for coverage.