In a new interview with Esquire actor Tom Hardy talks about his many upcoming projects including the long awaited and delayed Mad Max: Fury Road. Hardy of course reaffirms the studio plan to move forward with three other films, if this one is successful enough.
As for the pressure, Hardy says it’s enormous. “I’ve never been more excited and out of my comfort zone.” He’s seen the film, and says it’s “fucking unbelievable”. He’s attached to a further three Mad Max films, though as he says, “Everything’s based on figures and how things are perceived. Inevitably it’s a business.”
The movie actually needs to be a massive hit to deserve sequels, after production costs are said to be in the $200-300M+ range which could make it one of the most expensive R-Rated films in cinematic history. Luckily, the anticipation is there thanks to an excellent marketing campaign and will get the fanboys into the theatres with the first teaser trailer for Batman v Superman running in-front of it, Junkie XL will be scoring music for both films. It’s buzz at the moment couldn’t be bigger and being released very close to another gasoline fuelled action franchise was a wise move on the part of the studio.
Fury Road was in the works since the release of Beyond Thunderdome, but would eventually get placed into limbo for over twenty years. Mel Gibson had been attached all the way until his public meltdown which made the rather expensive project without a male lead. George Miller, who is the creator-writer-director of the franchise decided to set the new films between Mad Max and Road Warrior, allowing a whole new chapter for the character to be explored in his younger years, not to mention allowing a successor to the Mad Max throne.
It was always the intention of Miller to pursue a new trilogy and he would talk about this at-length during the original pre-production of the film. Adding that Charlize Theron’s character Furiosa would be eventually given her own series of films starting with a spin-off. His more recent statements seemingly echo this as he’s gearing-up to shoot the next two movies back-to-back, which is becoming a trend at Warner Bros. after The Matrix, Harry Potter, The Hobbit, and Justice League. A cost-cutting measure likely to save the studio money and obviously get the films shot, as Fury took almost thirty years to complete and we can’t blame Miller wanting to tell these stories sooner rather than later.
The next film titled Mad Max: Furiosa is named after Theron’s badass one-armed character and Miller confirmed he’s already completed the scripts for the two sequels.
“In order to tell this story, we came up with two others. We’ve written the screenplay to one and the novelization of another – but it’s a very rough novel. We kept working on them while we were working on other things.”
This could be a way to give audiences enough exposure to result in Furiosa getting her own series of films which Miller has been hinting to on a couple of occasions. Warner Bros. is already moving forward with Wonder Woman movies and they could lead the Hollywood charge to make more of these female-led action franchises. This spin-off is likely that third film Hardy is talking about.
I’m sure titles like Ferocious Furiosa have been thrown around by George.
Mad Max: Fury Road slams into theatres on May 15th, 2015.