A recent book by The New York Times' Kyle Buchanan, Blood, Sweat, and Chrome: The Wild and True Story of Mad Max: Fury Road, told the making-of story behind the Tom Hardy-starring post-apocalyptic action epic — and wild it was. The exhaustive tome details everything from brutal in-fighting between Hardy and his co-star Charlize Theron, to director George Miller's strained relationship with studio Warner Bros., and myriad details of set minutiae. Hardy went so far as to call it a “Cirque du Soileil fetish party in the middle of the desert”.
He must've been a fan of the S&M vibes, because Hardy signed on for three sequels prior to the release of Fury Road. While one prequel centring on Theron's character, Furiosa, is set for a 2024 debut — notably without Theron, with The Queen's Gambit star Anya Taylor-Joy stepping into the boots of the rebellious warrior — a Hardy-starring prequel centring on his titular Max has seemingly been in development hell for years.
We know it has a working title, Mad Max: The Wasteland, and Miller has put out a handful of his ideas over the years. (He's also denied that it'll even be subtitled The Wasteland.) Here's everything we know so far.
What will Mad Max: Fury Road 2 be about?
There's the million dollar question. Presumably it'll be an extension of the titular hero's journey across the post-apocalyptic landscape — perhaps with an eye to finally answering how things got all, well, post-apocalypsy. Miller has remained relatively tight-lipped on the story, but offered some crumbs in an interview with The Independent in 2017.
“We dug down deep into the subtext, the backstory of all the characters, and indeed the world… and without really thinking about it, we wrote two other screenplays just as part of the bible of the stories,” the 77-year-old said. “Somewhere, if the planets align, there will be two other films.”
Interviewed by Collider in the same year, Hardy seemed similarly confident that a prospective sequel would get into the deeper lore of the Mad Max universe: “There's mythology to do with Mad Max that spans copious amounts of tales,” he said.
In 2019, Deadline checked in with Miller as to the status of the long-awaited sequel. “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,” he said. He was typically not forthcoming as to what the film would be about, but a more traditional sequel seems the implication.
Is Tom Hardy still going to play Max?
As far as we can tell from existing contracts, yes. Hardy also confirmed his active intention to return to the franchise at an event in 2017. “It's a question of when,” said the British star. “I'm not sure it's called The Wasteland or not, ‘cause you never know. These titles change all the time. But there’s definitely another Mad Max project pending.”
In the aforementioned interview with Collider, Hardy explicitly said it was a matter of when, not if, he'd return for a Mad Max sequel. “I'm anxiously waiting to find out […] I'm really just waiting for the call like, ”All right, let's get the leathers on and get back out there and do some more." It's there. I'm just waiting for it and looking forward to it," he said.
But what about Mad Max: Furiosa?
Set to release in 2024, Furiosa has been described as variously bigger, more explosive, and crazier than Fury Road. The script was written before Fury Road even began shooting, according to an interview with Miller in The New York Times. Rosie Huntington-Whiteley, The Splendid Argharad in Fury Road, described it as “genius… I've always wondered if that movie's going to get made".
Because the film is set to focus on a younger Furiosa, Theron was swapped out for Anya Taylor-Joy. Miller had considered using CGI to de-age his original star, “but I just don't think we're nearly there yet,” he told The New York Times. “Despite the valiant attempts on The Irishman, I think there's still an uncanny valley. […] There's still a pretty wide valley, I believe.”
Hardy hasn't been cast in Furiosa, not least because it's a prequel centred on the eponymous heroine. For his part, he has described Fury Road as a Furiosa-centric movie in itself. “That was ultimately Furiosa's movie, which was fantastic. Fury Road. Furiosa. It was in the title,” he told Esquire. “If you look at it now, it was a changeover of hands in a way, from Mad Max to Furiosa. That's what they're filming now. Furiosa. It was a very well implemented changing of the guard."
But that's not to say Furiosa will be the be-all and end-all. “Miller's still got Mad Max,” Hardy said. “But he's split his feed between two characters, and that's really, really cool.”
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