Mad Max: The Wasteland

[Nightmare Asylum]

Porting over relevant information from the Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga thread into its own thread here, in order to be able to keep an ongoing (and separate) record of the production of Mad Max: The Wasteland over the next however many years, as was done with both Furiosa and Mad Max: Fury Road previously.

NOTE: There is a spoilery detail from Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga contained within this article from Entertainment Weekly on May 1, 2024, so I have spoiler tagged the entire article to account for that.

Spoiler

George Miller provides update on his plans for the future of the Mad Max franchise
"We are certainly working on it," he teases.

EW's 2024 Summer Preview has dozens of exclusive looks at the most anticipated TV shows, movies, books, and music of entertainment's hottest season. Continue to visit ew.com throughout May for more previews of what you'll be watching, reading, and listening to in the months to come.

Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga features a brief glimpse of Mad Max and his beloved car, the Interceptor. It's more than just a fun blink-and-you'll-miss-it Easter egg for longtime fans, though — director George Miller says it directly relates to where he'd like to take the franchise from here if the opportunity presents itself.

Furiosa, the prequel to 2015 Oscar winner Mad Max: Fury Road, serves as the origin story for its title character before her eventual encounter and team-up with Mad Max (Tom Hardy). Miller had outlined Furiosa and Max's backstories before Fury Road began filming to help the cast and crew understand the characters.

"In doing what we did in the preparation of Mad Max: Fury Road, we also wrote what happened to Max in the year before we encounter him in [that film]," Miller explains in Entertainment Weekly's cover story on Furiosa. "And as we get towards the end of [Furiosa], the chronology, basically, we had to see that Mad Max was lurking around somewhere because we do know what happened. The writers know what happened to Mad Max in that year before, and we have a whole story of that, which I would like to do sometime if I get the chance."

When pressed for an update on that project, Miller says, "Well, we are certainly working on it. And as I say, we wrote that basically as a novella, and now we've got a chance, we will get that into a screenplay form, and then we'll take it from there."

The long-running franchise began in 1979 with Mad Max, starring Mel Gibson as the titular character, and was followed by sequels in 1981 and 1985. Thirty years passed before the Hardy-led Fury Road was released, and another nine have elapsed since, so it could be a while before any new high-octane adventures come to pass.

In the meantime, Furiosa, starring Anya Taylor-Joy, Chris Hemsworth, and Tom Burke, hits theaters May 24.

https://ew.com/george-miller-update-future-mad-max-franchise-furiosa-8640844

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[Nightmare Asylum]

George Miller Says "There's Certainly More Stories" In The 'Mad Max' World – Cannes

"There's certainly more stories there," George Miller said Thursday, answering a question about whether there are more Mad Max movies on the horizon.

The question came during the afternoon Cannes Film Festival press conference for Miller's Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga, which had its world premiere screening the night before.

"Maybe because in order to tell the story of Fury Road, we needed to know about Furiosa and Max in the years before," said the Oscar-winning filmmaker.

"I'll definitely see how this goes," he added, meaning the box office for Furiosa. The Warner Bros/Village Roadshow production opens May 24, with a four-day domestic opening outlook sitting at around $50 million.

Producer Doug Mitchell praised Warner Bros for "the risk" they took on making Furiosa, which was in the works for 10 years. "It's a massive film, it's very expensive to do that, and Warners to take a risk supported by the Australian government ... hopefully audiences will embrace it."

Interestingly enough, Mad Max: Fury Road received a B+ CinemaScore.

Mitchell also talked about the idea of safety first before great cinema in regards to the full-tilt action in the film.

"We wake up with the reality that we can hurt somebody," the producer said. "Our priority led by George is not to injure anybody. The second responsibility is to make the film."

Miller has said that there's a script for another Max Max movie, The Wasteland, and while he's mum on it, it sounds like another prequel. One source close to the film hinted to Deadline that we have yet to see the backstory of Immortan Joe; that storyline has been fleshed out, and it wouldn't be a shocker if that's next in the wings.

Miller wrote Furiosa before Fury Road and showed that script to Charlize Theron. It was part of the reason why he got her to sign on to that 2015 film, which racked up 10 Oscar nominations and won six. In regards to using her in this prequel, it wasn't an option given the fact that Furiosa is told over the character's ages of 8 to 18. Miller wasn't impressed with the younger age tech that was out there used in The Irishman, hence the reason why he went with Alyla Browne as the younger Furiosa and Anya Taylor-Joy as the older.

Fury Road cost close to $190 million and grossed over $380M at the global box office. Furiosa cost $168M, so the bar is a high jump for profitability. So far, Rotten Tomatoes reviews are solid at 88% fresh — a much better reception for Furiosa out of Cannes this year than Disney's early blast-off of Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny a year ago, when that early promo move helped to put a nail in the pic's box office fortunes.

Furiosa received a near eight-minute standing ovation at its premiere in the Grand Lumiere Theatre last night.

https://deadline.com/2024/05/furiosa-george-miller-mad-max-sequels-cannes-1235918653/

[Nightmare Asylum]

Nothing really new, but you can hear Miller vocalizing his concept for this film and how it came to be here:

[Nightmare Asylum]

Having now seen Furiosa (twice), I can't help but think that The Wasteland is going to end up...

Spoiler

...pitting Max against Scrotus in some capacity, since he was left alive as of Furiosa's ending, but we know he wasn't around in Fury Road. Adding fuel to this speculation is the fact that Scrotus did appear in the 2015 Mad Max video game, which cribbed a lot of elements from Miller's notes/scripts from Fury Road/Furiosa/The Wasteland. I haven't played the game in full, but at this point I bet there's a lot of little nuggets of information present in there that must have been plucked directly from what Miller had on page for The Wasteland and will be seen in the film if/when it gets made.

[close]

[Stitch]

Having now seen Furiosa (twice), I can't help but think that The Wasteland is going to end up...

Spoiler

...pitting Max against Scrotus in some capacity, since he was left alive as of Furiosa's ending, but we know he wasn't around in Fury Road. Adding fuel to this speculation is the fact that Scrotus did appear in the 2015 Mad Max video game, which cribbed a lot of elements from Miller's notes/scripts from Fury Road/Furiosa/The Wasteland. I haven't played the game in full, but at this point I bet there's a lot of little nuggets of information present in there that must have been plucked directly from what Miller had on page for The Wasteland and will be seen in the film if/when it gets made.

[close]

The Mad Max game is fantastic, and if a movie is made with a similar storyline I would definitely be seeing it

[Nightmare Asylum]

Having now seen Furiosa (twice), I can't help but think that The Wasteland is going to end up...

Spoiler

...pitting Max against Scrotus in some capacity, since he was left alive as of Furiosa's ending, but we know he wasn't around in Fury Road. Adding fuel to this speculation is the fact that Scrotus did appear in the 2015 Mad Max video game, which cribbed a lot of elements from Miller's notes/scripts from Fury Road/Furiosa/The Wasteland. I haven't played the game in full, but at this point I bet there's a lot of little nuggets of information present in there that must have been plucked directly from what Miller had on page for The Wasteland and will be seen in the film if/when it gets made.

[close]

The Mad Max game is fantastic, and if a movie is made with a similar storyline I would definitely be seeing it

Miller was involved, up to a certain point, on the creation of a game with Cory Barlog. That project was eventually plucked from him and Barlog, and it morphed into what Avalanche made and released, sans Miller's involvement but with all of Miller and co.'s notes/scripts/resources made available to them (hence the overlaps between that game and the two recent films). Miller himself doesn't really see it as "canon" to his own works due to the messy situation surrounding it, which I totally understand, but it does strike me as a pretty invaluable resource from an outside perspective, just in terms of seeing how much of what Miller is doing now was already locked in place. We know the Furiosa script is more or less as old as Fury Road's, for example.

Ignore the clickbait phrasing on this Tweet (he's not actually seeking out Kojima to make a game based on the property, he just states that if one ever happens again he'd like it to come from someone like Kojima), but he acknowledged the situation surrounding the game pretty recently, at one of the Furiosa events:

https://twitter.com/gamingbible/status/1792566156810756105

I have the game, and was enjoying what I played of it, but only put a few hours or so into it before slipping away from it for no real discernable reason. I should give it a proper go one of these days. Especially now with Furiosa out.

[Nightmare Asylum]

At 31:31 some additional details about The Wasteland are revealed.

The novella/treatment hasn't yet been completely adapted into a screenplay, though that work is in progress, it is another saga in that it is set over the course of a whole year (the year prior to Fury Road), it has a lot of action, and it features Max and a young mother on some sort of journey together.

[T Dog]

I haven't seen Furiosa yet but would Hardy be back as Max or someone else due to Hardy being "difficult".

[Nightmare Asylum]

'Furiosa' Box Office Puts Brakes on George Miller's Next 'Mad Max' Movie
Miller penned 'The Wasteland' as part of the development process for 'Fury Road,' but it may not get past the starting line.

Forty-five years after George Miller introduced audiences to Mad Max, the auteur may have finally hit the end of the road through the postapocalyptic wasteland unless he finds some high-octane gasoline soon.

The revered filmmaker's Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga bowed to a disappointing $32 million domestically for the four-day Memorial Day weekend and $36.5 million overseas, diminishing hopes for Mad Max: The Wasteland, another Max installment Miller has been toying with for years.

Miller and Nico Lathouris wrote the scripts for both The Wasteland and Furiosa as part of the development process of Mad Max: Fury Road, the 2015 Warner Bros. film that became a surprise awards season juggernaut, winning six Oscars, and which became an instant action classic. The Wasteland would follow Max Rockatansky in the year before Fury Road, and is said to involve a young mother — and (naturally) include plenty of action.

In recent weeks, Miller has acknowledged much was hinging on Furiosa in terms of the possibility of The Wasteland. "I'll definitely wait to see how this [Furiosa] goes, before we even think about it," Miller told journalists May 16, the morning after the dystopian action-adventure played at the Cannes Film Festival to a seven-minute standing ovation. Sources agree that Wasteland's fate is complicated by Furiosa's box office, but stress it wasn't even in development. For its part, Warners — where Miller is a beloved figure — says it is incredibly proud of Furiosa.

The reaction from moviegoers is likely as positive as Miller hoped; it boasts a 90 percent positive audience score rating on Rotten Tomatoes and earned a B+ Cinemascore. But in a troubling and unexpected twist, far fewer females and younger male adults showed up than came out for Miller's Mad Max: Fury Road nine years ago.

On Fury Road's opening weekend, the split was 60 percent male to 40 percent, according to sources with access to exit surveys conducted by PostTrak. But Furiosa's audience was 71 percent male and 29 percent female, a worrisome decline and a startling number for a feature marketed as a female-driven vehicle. And the 18-24 age group, who are the most frequent moviegoers, plummeted from 31 percent for Fury Road to 21 percent for Furiosa.

Observers note that Fury Road aside, the male-fueled Mad Max series has always catered to a somewhat niche audience. The first three films, starring Mel Gibson, grossed less than $70 million combined domestically.

"IP like Mad Max and Ghostbusters is old, and they have the fans they're going to have," says one theater chain executive. "If studios can budget to that, they might make some decent money."

Talk of making Miller's next Mad Max film could resurface if Furiosa gets a major tune up and enjoys a road trip down the box office highway, as Fury Road did thanks to a strong multiplier. But many veteran box office pundits are doubtful whether such a recovery is possible, with one rival studio saying it could have a hard time getting past $90 million domestically.

Fury Road, which successfully rebooted the franchise by recasting Gibson with Tom Hardy and introducing Charlize Theron's Furiosa, opened to $45.3 million domestically on its way to grossing $379.4 million worldwide — a juggernaut by the standards of the franchise, and a modest hit by Hollywood standards considering it had a net budget of at least $157 million before marketing. Still, it had an outsized cultural impact, enough for the previous regime at Warner Bros. to greenlight Furiosa, as it seemed the studio had a revitalized franchise on its hands, and it would be a way of honoring Miller and the 45-year anniversary of Mad Max. Miller, who remains a beloved figure within the studio, prefers to shoot practically as much as possible before having visual effects supplement the rest, which pushes up production costs.

Miller opted not to bring back Theron, as he felt that de-aging technology used in films such as Martin Scorsese's The Irishman was distracting to audiences. (Theron, for her part, said she was sad not to return, despite her grueling experience shooting the first one.) Instead, Miller cast Anya Taylor-Joy as a younger version of Theron's titular character and added Chris Hemsworth as a warlord. Furiosa is also a Mad Max movie without Mad Max (save for a small cameo). 

"I think Furiosa suffered without Charlize. People who see the movie love it. The problem is getting them into theaters. She would have been able to do that," says one studio insider.

Adds a veteran Hollywood executive, "Fury Road was an outlier in the series. It also had a hot young star and a huge female star. Nine years later, it had neither."

Furiosa caps a May that will go down in infamy in box office lore. Due to the strikes, mega-tentpoles that have come to define summer were delayed, prompting moviegoing overall to plummet and theater chains hoping for a better 2025 ("Just survive til '25" has become a mantra for studios and theater owners). Miller's film was never intended to be an all-audience tentpole that anchors Memorial Day — last year, The Little Mermaid debuted to $118 million — but like other recent titles, it still came in well behind tracking predictions of $40 to $45 million.

Wall Street and Hollywood knew this year was going to be tough, and say declarations that theatrical is over are overblown.

"Let's see what happens next year with Mission: Impossible and in 2026 with the next Star Wars movie," says box office analyst Eric Handler of Roth Capital.

All eyes are now on June's Inside Out 2 and July's Despicable Me 4 and Deadpool & Wolverine to energize the marketplace and help other films in the process.

"This fever will hopefully break in June and July with an overperformance by at least one of the high-profile films to get the wind back in the sails of the box office," says Paul Dergarabedian of Comscore.

As for Furiosa, it has the upcoming weekend to itself and will still be playing in Imax and premium large-format screens, which ponied up a significant portion of the opening weekend gross. Then, it will have to contend with another vehicle and gun-heavy feature, Sony's Bad Boys: Ride or Die.

https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/movies/movie-news/mad-max-the-wasteland-furiosa-1235911133/

Despite the clickbaity headline here, there doesn't seem to be an official cancelation from the studio just yet. The article seems to be more so speculation based on Furiosa underperforming during its opening weekend. Here's hoping that Furiosa has some real legs in order to shift this. Word of mouth for the film has been very strong.

[Local Trouble]

I'm sure I'll catch it on streaming in a couple months.  I hope it's good.

[BlueMarsalis79]

I will catch in the cinema.

[Cosmic Incubation]

I already saw it once in the theater, but may try and go again just to give some more support. I really enjoyed it and think it's worth seeing again. Kinda sad it's underperforming.