George Miller to Move on from ‘Mad Max’?
"Mad Max may move ahead without its creator"
After the release of last year's
Mad Max: Fury Road, you might have caught news of more Mad Max movies being planned. Especially after "Fury Road" opened to near-universal acclaim. If we are to be blessed with more of Max Rockatansky, according to
The Guardian, it seems apparent that creator George Miller will not be involved with the series moving forward.
Miller spoke at this year's Golden Globes, explaining that a difficult production process on the delayed "Fury Road" informed his decision to not return to the series. "I won't make more
Mad Max movies," he stated. "I've shot in Australia in a field of wildflowers and flat red earth when it rained heavily forever. We had to wait 18 months and every return to the US was 27 hours. Those Mad Maxes take forever. I won't do those anymore."
The 2015 installment of the series, starring Tom Hardy and Charlize Theron, had been in development for two decades. Miller had originally planned to shoot "Fury Road" in the New South Wales outback in 2010, but soon had to abandon the shoot when the desert location he was to film on produced large amounts of wildflowers and grass after high levels of rainfall. Namibia was eventually the new location picked to continue production. He would face more challenges there when he and his filmmaking team were accused of damaging the sensitive ecosystem of the Dorob national park in the Namib desert.
If you happen to be surprised by Miller's Golden Globes comments, you should be. Especially since earlier this month, he seemed enthusiastic about the possibility of a
Mad Max spin-off featuring Charlize Theron's Furiosa, noting that she was a "pretty compelling character" and would make a great subject for such a film. Based on the notion of Miller not returning to the series, it would seem that he may pull a George Lucas and allow other filmmakers to take over the reigns and direction of the future of The Road Warrior. Time will tell.