Well, look who popped up in town: none other than George Miller, 81, who is visiting Los Angeles to meet with studios and pitch “one last” ‘Mad Max’ movie.
According to Puck, the interested parties are Amazon, Universal, and Sony Pictures, but not Warner Bros., the home of the first five ‘Mad Max’ movies, which passed on Miller’s pitch. The proposal also included a TV series. “Furiosa” must have soured them.
Word is that, after he’s done making this final movie, Miller plans to sell the Mad Max IP to the highest bidder.
The one ‘Mad Max’ project fans have been demanding for years is ‘The Wasteland,’ a prequel set one year before ‘Fury Road,’ with Tom Hardy in the lead role. Back in 2017, Miller reportedly entered pre-production on the project and even secured Hardy’s commitment, but progress stalled when Miller sued Warner Bros. for failing to pay him a contractually guaranteed bonus.
Miller recently told Vulture that he has a completed script ready to be filmed and “if for whatever reason the planets align,” he would make another ‘Max’ movie.
After the commercial failure of “Furiosa,” I recently noted that it would take a near miracle for Warner Bros. to greenlight another installment. Turns out, they’re now out. You see, despite strong reviews, “Furiosa” lost over $120M, making it the studio’s second-biggest money loser of 2024 — after “Joker: Folie a Deux.”
Miller has been working on ‘The Wasteland’ since the 1980s. It first began as an idea for a TV series, but when that fell through, it evolved into a video game. From there, the project took shape as a book, which eventually inspired a movie script—and now, after all these transformations, it may be returning to its original form as a TV series once again.
Would Tom Hardy even want to return to the role? If not, Miller probably wouldn’t mind recasting. He did just that with “Furiosa,” hiring Anya Taylor-Joy to take on the titular role made famous by Charlize Theron in ‘Fury Road.’
Warner Bros' "Clayface" is #1 this weekend with $24M domestic and $43M worldwide. That's a bit under what studio tracking was projecting a month ago ($25M-$35M), but this is not a total disaster.