‘Mad Max’ Trilogy Update: George Miller talks script and film's development

Get ready to go full throttle as two more installments of “Mad Max” is on the way, with pre-production scripts already on the table.

George Miller, the director of the first franchise, has confirmed that the trilogy is currently in development. And, as of now, there are two scripts sitting on the desk of Warner Brother, but the filmmaker has no idea which one will be used for the sequel.

In an interview with Top Gear, Miller recounted the series of unfortunate events that gave birth to these screenplays.

“This film [Fury Road] was green lit three times and fell over three times over a decade,” Miller said. “We went to shoot with Mel Gibson back in 2001, but then 9/11 happened, and the American dollar collapsed against the Australian dollar close to 30 per cent, so we lost that amount of budget overnight.”

The film was shelved temporarily in 2001, and years later, climatic changes in Australia forced the production team to shoot in Namibia instead.

The hellish delay in the first instalment gave them the perspective and the time to write the scripts for the sequel. Miller said, “[But] in this process, we had dug down deep into the back story, not only of the characters, but of every vehicle, how the steering wheels became religious artifacts and things like that.”

The original film, described as a loud mayhem, grossed over USD 400 million (AUD 562 million) at the box office and via home video. With a hugely successful predecessor and a completed pre-production script to boot, the question now is not if, but when Miller will be back to direct the sequel. No one is quite sure yet, but in the meantime, the filmmaker plans to work on something mellower before going for another wild ride filming guzzolene-filled war machines -- in the movie, they refer to gas as guzzoline and to cars as war machines -- in a post-apocalyptic desert.

"Mad Max: Fury Road" is an Australian-American production loosely based on the “Mad Max” multi-media franchise created by George Miller and Byron Kennedy. The film depicts a version of the earth where gasoline and water are scarce commodities. It revolves around the themes of survival, ecological collapse and vengeance.

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