Warner Bros.In the age of franchises, reboots and remakes, the 2015 reiteration of Mad Max seemed a surefire hit.
And indeed it was. Taking a worldwide box office total of more than £378 million, Fury Road matched the magnetic grunting of Tom Hardy with Charlize Theron’s heroine-to-be-reckoned-with, while Nicholas Hoult as Nux and Hugh Keays-Byrne as Immortan Joe added just the right amount of far-fetched, post-apocalyptic weirdness to have us all hooked.
Coupled with director George Miller’s preference for real stunts, real fire, and really bonkers set pieces over anything CGI, Mad Max: Fury Road was as visually stunning as it was successful – it even picked up ten Oscar nominations, including Best Picture and Best Director, winning six.
Warner BrosWhy then, in the age of milking franchises for all they’ve got, wasn’t a Fury Road sequel and a prequel and and an origin story and whatever else immediately made? This was already a new version of a late 1970s-early 80s series of films, after all.
While it would be nice to think director George Miller thought one standalone film was enough, it turns out it was reportedly because of legal matters and unpaid earnings that the studio didn’t initially pick up more Mad Max movies.
Still, the good news is the studio and filmmakers seem to have reconciled, and four years after we revisited the Mad Max world Miller has confirmed a Fury Road sequel is on its way.
Warner Bros.Speaking to IndieWire about it all, George Miller explained:
It all started because of the chaos at Warner Bros. and not [former CEO] Kevin Tsujihara, it was pre all that. He wasn’t the antagonist, because a lot of people didn’t know what was going on and were not prepared to make a definitive stand; everybody was running around fearful, it seems, through three regimes. It was hard to get anyone’s attention, so we went to litigation. The chaos has stabilized and it’s become extremely positive as the dust seems to have settled after the AT&T merger.
So, as for the good news, Miller added:
There are two stories, both involving Mad Max, and also a Furiosa story. We’re still solving, we’ve got to play out the Warners thing, it seems to be pretty clear that it’s going to happen.
Two more Mad Max films and a Furiosa story? We may have had to wait a while, but I reckon it’ll be worth it.
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Charlie Cocksedge is a journalist and sub-editor at UNILAD. He graduated from the University of Manchester with an MA in Creative Writing, where he learnt how to write in the third person, before getting his NCTJ. His work has also appeared in such places as The Guardian, PN Review and the bin.