After the release of Mad Max: Fury Road in 2015, filmmaker George Miller was quick to announce that there was “more to come”. Fury Roadwhich came after a 30-year hiatus in the Mad Max franchise, became an instant hit due to its sheer scale of action. Far Out Magazine called it one of the best action movies of the 21st century and won several Academy Awards.
Needless to say, fans were eager for more. Of course, Miller has never been one to rush. Fury Road itself was in development for several years, with reasons for delay including rainfall in the Australian desert. At the time, Miller etched the Mad Max universe in detail, producing an additional “two scripts without really trying”, as said to Top gear. Seven years later Fury Road was released, the shooting has finally started for furiosathe Mad Max prequel that tells the history of Charlize Theron’s character. While this is good news for the fans, it will also be a few years before we get to see it Mad Max: The Wasteland – the second of those two scripts that elaborates on the titular nature of the franchise.
Miller has been notoriously sparse in details about the wasteland, although he assured us that he does have a story in mind for the film. The statement leaves us with many questions, including whether or not Mad Max: The Wasteland is a sequel to Fury Road.
A Mad Max Universe
Fury Road earned the full Mad Max franchise a brand new mass of fans eager to get an update on upcoming movies in the franchise. Although there are few details, Miller has spoken extensively about the Mad Max universe that lives in his head – one built not as a compilation of isolated stories, but as an organic fictional universe.
At this point, it is well known to fans that the furiosa story has been written before Fury Road was even made. According to Miller himself, this was the result of an entirely organic process – one in which he continued with his instinct to explain the backstory of all the details included in Fury Road. This preparation was not only expedient because of the long development period of the film, but also essential to make a film in which all the elements spoke the same logic. In an interview with DeadlineMiller said, “I was wondering, okay, how does a guy who’s blind and dumb — and really can only play guitar — survive the apocalypse? It’s actually something I’d like to use when I make another movie, so I I better keep it to myself.”
Miller has also considered the possibility of letting other directors take over part of the business Mad Max spin-offs — and he not against the idea not at all. In fact, he already has a list of three directors to whom he would like to hand over the reins. So while the next entries in the franchise may be slow going in the future, it seems like the narrator in Miller definitely intends to Mad Max universe with more movies.
Tom Hardy is eager to return
While Miller is making furiosa at this point he still has plans for the titular star of Fury Road, Tom Hardy. While he has been busy with many blockbuster titles including playing the Marvel antihero venomwas actually contracted for three Mad Max movies, and was more than excited to jump back into character: “I signed on to do three. The question is when. I’m not sure if it’s called The Wasteland or not, because you never know. These titles are constantly changing. But there is definitely another Mad Max project in the pipeline.”
The Wasteland is not a direct sequel
In the same year that Fury Road was released, Miller had talked more about his pre-Fury Road period of writing in an interview with FMH. He explained that the two other stories he had been working on “will be tangentially linked. They are all in the same world, but they won’t be direct sequels”. As one of these stories turned out to be: furiosait seems quite likely that the wasteland is the second of those stories. He finally revealed a new detail about this period of writing in a recent interview with The AV clubwhich could explain which story we will see in the next one Mad Max movie.
“We also wrote, not a screenplay, but almost in new form, Nico Lathouris and I, what happened to Max that year before, and that’s something we’ll come back to later. But by telling each other the story of Furiosa, everything in Fury Road had to be explained. In my mind I have a backstory of the Doof Warrior, who plays guitar. How can a blind man who can only play guitar, how can he survive in a wasteland where everyone is in extremis? How did he get there? So we wrote little stories for each character when we made Fury Road.”
furiosa was born from Miller’s desire to delve deeper into the bizarre post-apocalyptic world order in Fury Road. It could very well be that this “novel” describing Max Rockatansky’s forays in the time leading up to Fury Road could form the basis of the wasteland, essentially making the film a prequel rather than a sequel. However, unlike furiosa, it probably won’t be Max Rockatansky’s origin story. Since Miller has stated that the “novel” follows Max the year before Fury Road, the wasteland will probably tell the story of how he ends up being imprisoned by Immortan Joe.