‘Furiosa’s George Miller On Why Prequel Was A “Pretty Smooth Shoot” Next To ‘Fury Road’; Filmmaker In “Wait And See” On Next Installment ‘Wasteland’ – Cannes Studio

When you think about the road for Furiosa to the big screen, it’s a movie that has survived four Warner Bros executive administrations, with the feature’s greenlight coming back when Alan Horn was president and COO and Courtenay Valenti was president of production at the studio.

And the making of Mad Max: Fury Road was epic, including some six months and reshoots, tiffs between Tom Hardy and Charlize Theron, a blustering visit from a Warner Bros executive over the budget to Namibia, followed by a $7 million lawsuit that George Miller’s production company brought against the studio over bonuses. But in great chaos comes brilliant art, and Mad Max: Fury Road grossed over $380 million and won six Oscars.

For Miller, you could say that Furiosa by comparison was a walk in the park, even with a majority of the three-unit, thousand-person-crew production devoted to the shooting of a big-rig action scene that makes up some near 200 shots in the film.

Miller, speaking at the Deadline Studio at the Cannes Film Festival, where the film world premieres tonight, said of Furiosa‘s thriving at Warners, “Once everything settled done with our relationship with Warner Bros, once they settled down into this really impressive regime they have at the moment, it went relatively smoothly.”

“Shooting movies, no matter what, they’re always tough. … But when everyone is working well in a common purpose, they can adjust to all the things that need to happen, whether it’s Covid or rain or million things that will go wrong,” said the Oscar winning Happy Feet filmmaker.

“By and large we had a pretty smooth shoot compared to what we did on Fury Road.”

Miller told Deadline that when it comes to the next Mad Max saga installment, The Wasteland, he’s in “wait and see” mode. “We have to see how well this one does,” he told us. Miller has said that movie is tangentially linked to Mad Max: Fury Road, but not a direct sequel.

After tonight’s world premiere, Furiosa hits cinemas stateside on May 24 with a projected four-day Memorial Day weekend take of $50 million.

The Deadline Studio is presented by Neom.