Will he, or won’t he? This has been the question dogging director George Miller ever since his Mad Max: Fury Road excited movie audiences, captured year-end accolades, and eventually nabbed multiple Academy Award nominations, including Best Picture. The question centers around whether or not Miller can make a sequel to the film (seeing as how it’s the fourth in an ongoing anthology of stories involving the road warrior, Max). As it turns out, Miller doesn’t want to make one Mad Max sequel. He has ideas for two.
As part of the interview series “The Hollywood Masters,” George Miller was asked by THR what his plans are for a possible Mad Max: Fury Road sequel. The director has wavered when posed this question in the past, but this time, he took a hard left toward Sequel Town. George Miller explains:
Because this got delayed so often, and we dug down deep into the backstory, Nick Lathouris and I have written two other stories. One is a full script. It doesn’t have a title. And one of them we talked about in great detail and he wrote as a novella.”
So the production delays on Fury Road, which at this stage of the conversation are part of the film’s legacy, allowed George Miller and his collaborators more time to work on the next chapters of the story. Interesting. It’s worth pointing out that Miller followed up those quotes to THR by emphasizing once again that he needs to do “something small and quick” before diving back into the Wastelands with Max and his crew. So the Fury Road sequel might not arrive any time soon. Sorry about that, folks.
Miller has been tapdancing around the topic of more Mad Max movies for a few months, at least. At one point, he suggested making a movie based on Charlize Theron’s feral Furiosa character, but the actress seemed to have no real knowledge of that project when she was recently asked about it. Miller, who is 70 years old, has talked about the physical demands of making a Mad Max film, primarily because he replies on practical effects that demand the creation of war machines that embark on bone-crunching journeys through harsh terrains. This isn’t a cushy film shoot on a green-screened lot. This is guerilla-style filmmaking, and they take a toll on the director, his cast, and his crew.
Here’s a clip of Miller in conversation with The Hollywood Reporter.
That being said, George Miller is feeling the love for Mad Max: Fury Road -- from the fans, and from the Academy – so if he has the ideas for two more movies, we say, “Bring them on!” Do you agree?
