Mad Max: The Wasteland Might Continue The Epic Action Franchise After Furiosa

Warner Bros.

WE’RE IN AN age where some of our very best action movie series are also some of the longest-running. Tom Cruise’s Mission: Impossible series has been steadily chugging along a stunts-filled Ethan Hunt bonanza every few years since the first Brian De Palma-directed installment came out back in 1996. The Fast and The Furious has been running for more than two decades. Indiana Jones and Top Gun have relatively recently released their most recent installments, both more than 30 years after their first film. Hell, even John Wick is now more than 10 years old. But none of these have been running as long (or as loose and fast with continuity) as George Miller’s epic Mad Max franchise.

While the franchise began with the low-budget 1979 film Mad Max, it quickly rose in budget and ambition for a pair of ’80s sequels that dove into its post-apocalyptic landscape: The Road Warrior (also known as Mad Max 2) in 1981 and Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome in 1985. Things then went stagnant for 30 years.

There’s not a soul alive, however, who would tell you that the Mad Max wait wasn’t worth it, as 2015 marked the release of Mad Max: Fury Road, one of the most technically-impressive action spectacles you’ll ever see, and without question one of the best movies of all time. Fury Road won six Oscars, also earning a Best Picture nomination for the film itself and a Best Director nomination for Miller. That kept audiences excited and thirsty long enough to force production on Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga, the prequel story telling the tale of Furiosa’s (played by Charlize Theron in Fury Road) youth.

Furiosa has now finally been released, and to much acclaim. But despite Miller’s age (he turned 79 in March) that shouldn’t be the end of the Mad Max story; he announced Mad Max: The Wasteland way back in 2015, and has continued to hint at it in the years since (despite moving forward with production on Furiosa first).

Now that the Imperator Furiosa film has been released—and is both well-received and shaping up to be a box office hit—it’s worth speculating when, and how, the Mad Max franchise will continue on the big screen.

Will there be another Mad Max movie after Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga?

Warner Bros.

Miller and company want to make another Mad Max film, titled (as of now) Mad Max: The Wasteland. But the opportunity to make that film will likely depend on the box office performance of Furiosa.

“The Mad Max world is very much alive, and it’s in George’s imagination,” Guy Norris, action designer for Furiosa and Miller’s longtime stunt collaborator, said in a recent interview with Men’s Health. “There’s already another very, very well developed project called The Wasteland. We’re in the lap of the audience gods as to what everybody thinks of this. If everything aligns very well, I’m hoping that very shortly we’ll be back out in the desert somewhere in Australia continuing the Mad Max saga.”

In an interview with The AV Club, Miller said that he and Nico Lathouris (his co-writer for both Fury Road and Furiosa) wrote “not a screenplay, but almost in novel form… what happened to Max in that year before,” and that “that’s something that we’ll look at further down the track.”

It’s likely, then, that that’s the source for The Wasteland—a prequel following Max during the year before the events of Fury Road. Whether Tom Hardy would return for that film, or if the character would be recast again, is anyone’s guess.

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