Well, this is sad if it’s true. George Miller reportedly stated at the Golden Globes that he’s got no plans to direct any more Mad Max films.
Page Six reported the veteran filmmaker, who was up for a prize for our Undisputed Film Of 2015 Mad Max: Fury Road, as saying “I won’t make more Mad Max movies. Fury Road with Charlize Theron, Zoë Kravitz, Rosie Huntington-Whiteley and Riley Keough was forever getting completed. If you finish one in a year, it’s considered a leap of faith. Start, stop, start again.”
“I’ve shot in Australia in a field of wild flowers and flat red earth when it rained heavily forever,” he continued. “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.”
As The Guardian notes, this does contradict what he previously said this month when speaking to EW, that he would be open to returning to the Mad Max universe but planned on making a smaller and more intimate movie first. “…something smaller that’s contemporary and that we can get through fairly quickly. Something without too much technical difficulty – just something more performance-based, just to sort of clear the exhaust.”
Fury Road was obviously an incredible labour as well as an incredible labour of love for the filmmaker and it took years to create, so exhaustion is most definitely understandable. But it was incredible to see that the wait was more than worth it as Miller gave us one of the most spectacular action movies in recent memory, not to mention one of the most badass modern heroes in Charlize Theron’s Imperator Furiosa, whose character has frequently been discussed in relation to a spin-off movie.
The question then becomes would we want to see another film set in this universe that wasn’t directed by George Miller? Our gut reaction would of course be: No, what the hell are you talking about? But we could be open to it, given the right filmmaker. Maybe. Very cautiously. And that’s even assuming that Miller doesn’t change his mind. C’mon, George…
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