Director George Miller has reached out to the DailyTelegraph giving an update on Mad Max: Fury Road. The sequel/reboot of his successful Mad Max franchise which he directed the previous three films with Mel Gibson in the lead role.

Tom Hardy will star as the new Max along with Charlize Theron, Patrick Stewart (X-Men 1-3) , Nicholas Hoult (Jack The Giant Killer, X-Men First Class), Teressa Palmer, Zoe Kravitz (X-Men First Class) and Adelaide Clemens.

“We will restart pre-production later this year and begin early next year—weather permitting,” Miller said acknowledging the year-long delay he and Warner Bros. had agreed on. “We’ve built the vehicles. We’ve designed the movie. The principal cast is locked in. The film is funded. It’s all ready to go. We just wait,”

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No 3-D either. As THRALL WORLD previously posted, TOM HARDY has been cast as the likely and still unknown villian.

Which is the very last thing a sequel 25 years in the making needs, most of those spent in a reserved seat in development hell. The bad news comes from The Australian, which say that the long over due sequel – the last being Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome some 25 years ago – will now be looking at a 2012 shooting date at the earliest — pushing back a release even further.

Damn it, and heres me hoping for a 2011 release — it just seems as though someone or something has it out for the film, and unless it can get it self out of first gear fast,  then I’m afraid to say that a 2013 release at the earliest will be what to expect this time round. At the moment pre-production is already at a snails pace and it looks like Mad Max: Fury Road is going nowhere fast.

To give you an idea of how long ago this film actually dates, when it was conceived and first came into existence they still had Mel Gibson playing lead role of Max — and now I can’t imagine he, or the producers would like to see an old Max dishing vengeance one walking stick hit at a time. Now we have the amazing Tom Hardy (Eames, Inception) as titular post-apocoplyptic vigilante cop.

Fury Road was scheduled to shoot back-to-back along with its eventual sequel Furiosa on its Australian location, with reportedly 130 cars at its disposal for the film — but I fear that we may not be seeing some car-nage for quite some time!

The report comes from The Australian, who suggests that the postponement might be the result of a last minute decision to film two Mad Max films during the one production. This would inevitably lead to casting and screenwriting issues. Meanwhile, Inside Film have the scoop that Miller plans to shoot the $100 million flick with 3-D cameras – another possible reason for the postponement.

The delay has left hundreds of crew without jobs, and Australia without a multi-million dollar production until 2011. Warner Bros’ big budget superhero flick The Green Lantern was set to shoot in Australia this year, but production moved to Louisiana to keep costs down.

Fury Road is slated to star Tom Hardy as Max Rockatansky – the role that Mel Gibson made famous in 1979′s Mad Max.

Discuss: So, $100 million budget, 3-D cameras, two films in one production, and a six month shooting delay. Thoughts?

Instead of a sequel to the Mad Max series it looks like we are getting one reboot and a sequel to the reboot.    The two films, titled Mad Max: Fury Road and Mad Max: Furiosa, are reportedly being shot back to back to save on production costs.  Sounds good to me.  

Read more here…

http://twitchfilm.net/news/2010/07/george-miller-working-on-not-one-but-two-new-mad-max-films.php