There will be more Mad Max movies in George Miller’s future
A big stink was made two days ago over an interview Mad Max: Fury Road director George Miller gave in which he was quoted as saying that he won’t make more Mad Max movies. Now that the dust has settled and the Australian filmmaker has two more Oscar nominations under his belt for the film (Best Picture, Best Director; the film itself received 10 total), he’s spoken to TheWrap and clarified the previous statement, which was in fact a misquote.
“That was a completely garbled interview. I was in New York and it was so noisy and the journalist was asking me questions on a red carpet at the National Board of Review,” he said. “She completely got the wrong fragments of information that were just not true. I said no, [another ‘Mad Max’ movie] will not be next, and she took that to mean I never wanted to make another ‘Mad Max.’ It won’t necessarily be next, but I have two more stories.”
That jibes with a statement Miller made to Studio 360 a few days ago, where he seemed open to the possibility of doing more himself.
“What happened to Max after ‘Fury Road’? What happened before ‘Fury Road’? What happened to the other characters?” Miller said. “Those stories are there — probably not as the next film but the film after. I’d like to do one of them. We’ll see. As John Lennon said, life is what happens when you’re making other plans. There are so many other directors out there. People are directing younger and younger. They’re getting a real sense of cinema very, very early. There are some great directors out there.”
Despite rumors that Warner Bros. offered Miller a stab at a Man of Steel sequel, the Australian is apparently going much smaller for his mysterious next directorial outing.
“I’ve got something a bit smaller before we go back out into the wasteland — something that’s contemporary that we can get through fairly quickly,” said Miller to Entertainment Weekly last week. “And something with not too much technical difficulty. Something more performance-based and so on, just to clear the exhaust.”
Of course, these are still early days on the Mad Max 5 and 6 front, although with Blu-ray/DVD sales going through the roof, it seems like only a matter of time before Tom Hardy slaps on the leather jacket again to meet the challenges a post-apocalyptic landscape has to offer. All we know right now is Charlize Theron’s Furiosa is not expected to play a central role. Even the proposed title Miller previously revealed for the next movie, “Mad Max: The Wasteland,” is also apparently in flux.
