Director Justin Kurzel has a proposal for a Mad Max prequel, depending on where the franchise goes next. Kurzel is no stranger to jumping into existing franchises, and as an Australian he is naturally interested in George Miller’s iconic post-apocalyptic series. In an interview with Collider last week, he spoke about his daydream of exploring the wastelands before the events of the first Mad Max movie in 1979.
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“I’ll tell you what, maybe because it was such a big influence, but I’ve always been curious about what happened before the first Mad Max — what was that world with the Nightrider, pre-Mad Max?” Kurzel wondered. “I’ve always been very curious about that and very tempted to talk to George [Miller] about the possibility of a world that is pre-Mad Max 1 and what that is. That’s been one that I’ve always been really curious about because it was such an influential film in my time… It’s an amazing franchise, but I’ve always been curious about those moments before that first one because it’s set up so richly. And it’s such a great time in Australia, too, that period.”
Mad Max began as a low-budget action film with some light sci-fi elements thrown in, but it has since been fleshed out into one of the most elaborate post-apocalyptic settings in media. So far, all five movies in the franchise have been directed and co-written by George Miller – with co-director George Ogilvie signing on for the third installment, Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome. Miller has never said anything concrete about passing the torch to another filmmaker. In fact, just this year he told Collider that he hopes to make another prequel following the success of Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga.
George Miller’s Plans for Mad Max
Miller said that this prequel would cover all the backstory he has already written in the process of creating Fury Road and Furiosa. He said: “To tell the story of Fury Road, which happens over a very compressed amount of time, you could argue that the first act of Fury Road and the last act are almost playing in real time over three days in order to tell that story on the run. Picking up all the backstory, all the exposition on the way, everybody working on the film — not only the cars, but all the designers, all the prop makers, everybody — had to understand the backstory very intimately in order for it to be coherent.”
“So, we had to write the story of Furiosa and the 18 years, as it turns out, before we meet her in Fury Road,” he went on. “We also had to write the story of the year of Max in the year before we encounter him in Fury Road. So, we have that story. We wrote that as a novella, Nico Lathouris and I, and so that’s the story we have yet to tell.”
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If Miller were looking to put another director at the wheel of the war rig, Kurzel probably wouldn’t be the only one vying for the job. Kurzel is best known for his 2016 film adaptation of Assassin’s Creed, which has mixed reviews at best. Plans for a sequel were canceled. Right now, Kurzel is promoting the historical crime thriller The Order, which will be available to stream on Prime Video sometime soon. The Mad Max movies are streaming now on Max.
