George Miller talks Mad Max: Fury Road

The long-awaited Mad Max sequel Fury Road has been teasing us with its on-again-off-again production status for a while now. Last year saw a glut of on-set pictures of some big-ass vehicles hit the web, only for everything to go quiet again, the project seemingly stuck in limbo.

Well, according to director George Miller, the film is very much alive, and should be moving forward in 2012. “We have 150 big vehicles built,” said Miller, with regards to the aforementioned photos. "We were all set to shoot in the Australian desert and then unprecedented rain came and what was the wasteland is now a flower garden.”

“The big massive salt flats in the centre of Australia where they record speed trials and stuff is now full of pelicans and fish,” he continued. “We sort of lost the wasteland!”

So apparently, the ongoing delay is simply a case of finding somewhere new to shoot. We’d be surprised if that was all there was to it, but Miller hopes the film will go ahead next year.

That said, he remains almost maddeningly philosophical about the situation. “Life is what happens when you're making other plans'", he said. “I never know what film I'm going to make next.” Hmm, we won’t hold our breath then.

Should it go ahead as planned, Mad Max: Fury Road will see Tom Hardy replace Mel Gibson as dystopian drifter Max Rockatansky, with Charlize Theron and Zoe Kravitz as his leading ladies. A planned sequel, Mad Max: Furiosa was set to be filmed back-to-back with Fury Road , but at this stage, that might be a case of running before you can walk…