2015’s Mad Max: Fury Road is one of the balls-out craziest action movies ever made. It’s also one of the best. Understandably, fans have been eager to hear any news of a sequel, because you can’t just drop a masterpiece like that on us and then walk out of the room. Luckily, Mad Max director George Miller provided some info about a Fury Road sequel in an interview with Deadline about his upcoming project Three Thousand Years of Longing.
“I’m not done with the Mad Max story and I think you have to be a multi-tasker and there’s certainly another Mad Max coming down the pike after this,” Miller said. “We’re in preparation on that as well. It’s an interesting question, the idea of multi-tasking. I discuss this with other filmmakers and I think what happens to me is that when you’re working on one thing, and you get so distracted and focused on that one thing, it’s like a creative holiday to focus on the other one for a bit. It helps you achieve that objectivity, to look at the thing afresh each time and say, I thought I was doing this, but it doesn’t seem to be the case now.”
Described as a “romance,” Longing appears to be just about as far removed from the gonzo spectacle of Fury Road as you can get. But honestly, that makes sense for Miller. In addition to the Mad Max series, he wrote and directed Babe: Pig in the City, Happy Feet, and Happy Feet Two. (He also c-wrote the screenplay for the original Babe.)
“The more different the films are, the more interesting that is,” Miller said. “A really good example: I was working on Happy Feet Two while Fury Road was getting up and then falling down. They couldn’t have been more different. One was animation, the other live-action. It worked for me.”
Filming for Longing, which is set to star Idris Elba and Tilda Swinton, doesn’t begin until March. So unfortunately we’re probably still a few years away from another Mad Max film. But as long as it doesn’t take Miller another 20 year Thunderdome-to-Fury–Road hiatus, it’ll be worth the wait.
