George Miller Won’t Rule Out Another ‘Mad Max’ Movie as ‘Furiosa’ Team Meets the Press in Cannes

Aaron Couch
·4 min read
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The dust was just beginning to settle and the smell of guzzolene was still in the air after Wednesday night’s high-octane Cannes premiere of Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga. But after more than a decade of development and a grueling shoot, the work was not done for filmmaker George Miller and stars Anya Taylor-Joy and Chris Hemsworth, who faced the international press during a lively conference to discuss the long journey to their Fury Road prequel.

Australian filmmaker Miller has now made five Mad Max films over 45 years, but none have been as anticipated as Furiosa. That’s thanks to the pedigree of Fury Road, Miller’s 2015 film that introduced the world to Imperator Furiosa, played in that feature by Charlize Theron. It is considered one of the greatest action movies of all time and became a surprise awards season juggernaut that won six Oscars.

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Miller and his team penned the Furiosa script as part of the development process on Fury Road, as well as a script detailing the life of Max (Tom Hardy) in the year before that film as well.

“There are certainly other stories there. Mainly because in order to tell the story of Fury Road, we had to know the backstory of Furiosa and Max in the year before,” said Miller when asked if he has more Mad Max movies left in the tank. “That was a tool for the cast and crew. We know the Max story from the year before. I’ll definitely wait to see how this [Furiosa] goes, before we even think about it.”

So far, the reception has been promising. On Wednesday night, Furiosa received a seven-minute standing ovation, one that potentially could have lasted longer as Miller took the microphone to speak, which had the perhaps unintended effect of silencing the applause.

At the press conference Thursday, Miller noted that in the early days of Mad Max, international distributors always get the apocalyptic tale populated with Australian voices. When 1979’s Mad Max came to the U.S., it was dubbed over with American accents.

“The film completely flopped in America,” said Miller, who with Furiosa finally has a Max film featuring almost all Australian accents, even if he was doubtful British actor Tom Burke, who plays an ally of Furiosa’s, could pull off the famously challenging accent (he did).

The filmmaker also acknowledged he never imagined he’d keep going with the franchise this long. “If you are just repeating what you’ve done, there’s no appetite to do that,” Miller said of trying to make each film different. “I’ve often wondered, ‘Am I crazy?’ Then I realize I’m driven by my curiosity. I feel that I’m learning.”

The action-heavy Furiosa included a sequence that took 79 days to shoot, and Taylor-Joy spoke about the importance of stunt double Hayley Wright for her safety and her psyche. The pair met on the film, and have become inseparable. “She is now one of my best friends in the entire world. Rather than it being an environment of aggression…it was, ‘I love you. I believe in you,'” Taylor-Joy said of Wright teaching her how to perform her stunts.

Hemsworth discussed crafting his villain Dementus with Miller, with one journalist, making Hemsworth laugh, describing the character as Darth Vader with a hint of Looney Tunes. “It was important to George and I to find the humanity in the character and sprinkle in moments of vulnerability and understand he was a product of the Waste Land and had suffered tremendously,” said Hemsworth of the Biker Horde leader.

After Furiosa‘s Cannes premiere, it landed with a strong 88 percent critics score on Rotten Tomatoes, though The Hollywood Reporter chief critic David Rooney was less high on the film than others, writing in his review, “Hate to be a grouch when legions of social media film bros are breathlessly worshipping at the altar of The Demi-God of Cinema, George Miller, but Furiosa is a big step down from Mad Max: Fury Road. Whereas the 2015 instant action classic had grit, gravitas and turbo-charged propulsion that wouldn’t quit, this fifth installment in the dystopian saga grinds on in fits and starts, with little tension or fluidity in a narrative whose shapelessness is heightened by its pretentious chapter structure.”

The next test for Furiosa will be at the box office, when the $168 million Warner Bros. feature arrives May 22. As for Miller, who recalled growing up crafting stories of medieval knights with his brothers using trash can lids as shields, he plans to keep doing what he’s always done: treat the act of creation like a child at play would.

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