David J. Williams

In Hollywood, nothing is ever truly over. Talk about a fourth Mad Max has been on and off again for so long one wonders if George Miller has taken a leaf or two from the Axl Rose playbook . . . but there have been recent reports that the success of 2006’s HAPPY FEET (!) has given Miller the leverage he needed to put Mad Max 4 into pre-production.  Particularly intriguing to me is that longtime  2000 A.D. artist Brendan McCarthy is supposedly penning the script. . .  McCarthy came up with many of my favorite Judge Dredd storylines, including one in which Ayers Rock gets blown up, which may or may not be a coincidence. Word is that Mel won’t be starring in the movie, perhaps because he’s too old to be an action-hero box office draw, but presumably also because he failed to outrun the cops the one time it counted most and then proceeded to settle some Authorial Intent questions in a far more explicit way than Derrida would ever have bargained for.

There’s also talk that Mad Max 4 will be animated, a la Happy Feet.    This makes me more than a little nervous.  But like I said yesterday, you have to respect this franchise for resisting the urge to make each movie a carbon copy of the one that came before it.  If Miller thinks he can push the envelope with an animated format, then it’ll be interesting to watch what he comes up with.  At the very least, it Fury Road ever DOES come to pass, we’ll get to see the next stage in the history of that world that Miller and Kennedy created back in the 1970s, when oil was drying up and the world seemed on the brink in more ways than one.  Times sure have changed, haven’t they?