George Miller Still Not Sure If Mad Max 4 Will Happen

It nearly went into production last year, until rain stopped play, but the director won’t believe it’s happening until it’s happening

Despite Mad Max 4 , aka, Fury Road nearly shooting last year, and the fact that 150 vehicles have already been built for the movie, director George Miller is still hedging his bets about whether the film will ever actually be shot.

“Theoretically, it’s next year,” says Miller on Coming Soon of the project which would see Tom Hardy ( The Dark Knight Rises , Inception ) in the role Mel Gibson made famous. “We have 150 big vehicles built and so on.” But, he adds, “You know, John Lennon said, ‘Life is what happens when you’re making other plans. Films keep on coming out of my head and I never know what film I’m going to make next.”

Of the aborted attempts to film last year, he says, “We were all geared up for that. We were all set to shoot in the Australian desert and then unprecedented rain came and what was the wasteland – completely flat, red earth – is now a flower garden. The big massive salt flats in the centre of Australia where they do record speed trials and stuff is now full of pelicans and fish... We sort of lost the wasteland.”

Miller, who is doing the publicity rounds round for Happy Feet 2 , also reveals that he’s not likely leap into working on a third film in the animated penguin franchise any time soon: “If you put a gun to my head and said, ‘You have to come up with a story for Happy Feet 3 ,’ I’d say, ‘Shoot me!’ I would have no idea. I really would have no idea. The stories creep up on you... You just have to allow the stories to come and then they get in like little earworms in your head and then they won't go away. If that happens and we’ve got the energy, we’ll do a third one. If that doesn’t happen, it doesn’t happen. But that’s the only way you can do it. It has to be authentic. I really wanted to make this film better than the first one. Otherwise, at my age, what's the point?”