Hope for The Wasteland? George Miller is trying to push the next Mad Max movie forward

Director George Miller decided to continue the Mad Max franchise with the Mad Max: Fury Road prequel Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga, but while the movie got good reviews (like the 9/10 review from JoBlo’s own Chris Bumbray), the worldwide box office numbers just barely passed the $168 million budget. The Furiosa story was clearly not something a lot of movie-goers were exceptionally eager to see on the big screen. But what about another Max movie? In 2015, Miller announced that he had already written a screenplay and a novella of further stories, and Max himself would return in a film called Mad Max: The Wasteland. Now, Matthew Belloni of Puck reports that Miller is trying to make Mad Max: The Wasteland happen.

What do we know about Mad Max: The Wasteland?

We now know that when Miller said he had a screenplay and a novella written, Furiosa was the screenplay. In fact, the Furiosa script was “virtually complete” before Fury Road even started filming. Within the novella is the foundation for Mad Max: The Wasteland – and as recently as 2022, Miller described the story as “still not fully evolved”.

As for what exactly the Wasteland novella deals with, Miller told AV Club, “We also wrote, not a screenplay, but almost in novel form, Nico Lathouris and I, what happened to Max in that year before (the events of Mad Max: Fury Road), and that’s something that we’ll look at further down the track later.” Since the story is set “before”, Miller has confirmed that the Furiosa character is not involved.

It’s worth noting that Miller and Lathouris did craft another Mad story that was published as a two-part tie-in comic book when Fury Road was released. That story showed Max competing in a Thunderdome gladiator battle at Gastown to win a V8 engine for his car, then being asked by a mother to venture into the ruins of a city to save her young daughter from a group of cannibals called the Buzzards. It would need to be expanded, but that story could have served as the basis for a cool movie – and it would be interesting to see if anything from it makes its way into Mad Max: The Wasteland.

The long delay between films does bring up the question, if Mad Max: The Wasteland does ever go into production, will Tom Hardy still be playing Max, or would he be replaced?

Could the movie finally happen?

First off, some bad news: the studio that the Mad Max franchise has long called home, Warner Bros., has reportedly already passed on the chance to stay in the Max business with Miller… which makes some sense, after the financial disappointment of Furiosa.

So, Puck reports that Miller was just in Hollywood to meet with other studios about a new Mad Max movie. Amazon, Universal, and Sony Pictures are said to be showing interest.

According to Belloni’s source, “Miller is saying he would like to make one last Mad Max pic, then a TV series, then sell the whole property to the highest bidder.“

Are you glad to hear that Miller is trying to push Mad Max: The Wasteland (and a TV series) forward? Would you like to see the franchise move to Amazon, Universal, or Sony? Let us know by leaving a comment below.

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