14 DAY TRIAL // Surprising absolutely no one, writer and director George Miller has announced the sequel to “Mad Max: Fury Road,” the latest Warner Bros. release, now running in theaters worldwide. It will be called “Mad Max: The Wasteland” and, yes, it will see Tom Hardy return as the titular character.
However, before you work yourself up into a frenzy, you should know that a director’s announcement doesn’t equal confirmation from the movie studio. Since it’s the studio that infuses cash into a project, we still have to wait for Warners to give the official greenlight to the sequel.
On the other hand, “Fury Road” is poised to make a lot of money at the box office, based on international figures during its opening weekend. The film has an estimated budget of about $150 million (€134.5 million) and grossed over $110 million (€98.6 million) in its first weekend.
In a Q&A with Jeff Goldsmith, Miller detailed his idea for a sequel, The Playlist reports. “We’ve got one screenplay and a novella. It happened because with the delays [on ‘Fury Road’], and writing all the backstories, they just expanded.”
The sequel would go by the working title “The Wasteland,” which puts to rest reports that Charlize Theron’s character would get her own spinoff with “Mad Max: Furiosa.”
Even though Warners is yet to confirm the sequel, it already has its own IMDB page. For the time being, Tom Hardy is the only actor attached to it, probably because he revealed in a recent interview that he had signed a 3-picture deal with the studio, dependent on the first film’s success.
Hello Twitter! Thanks for all the kind words written and said about the film. We had a lot of fun making it..and there's more Max to come.
— George Miller (@GMillerMax) May 17, 2015