By Darryl Mason
Seven years after an aborted attempt to film the long overdue sequel, Mad Max 4 : Fury Road, is finally going into production, and will start shooting next year in New South Wales.
The Daily Telegraph reports that work on the film will start immediately, injecting tens of millions of dollars into the economy and creating more than 500 jobs.American actress Charlize Theron has reportedly signed on to co-star, with Sam Worthington expected to take over the role of 'Max' from Mel Gibson.
Miller's company Kennedy Miller Mitchell will start pre-production immediately.
Today's mainstream media stories fail to mention that director George Miller has already said the new movie will be animated (in Japanese anime style), and will be released in 3D, in 2011 :
“The anime is an opportunity for me to shift a little bit about what anime is doing because anime is ripe for an adjustment or sea change,” he explained. “It’s coming in games and I believe it’s the same in anime."Has Miller now dumped plans for a 3D animated Fury Road? It seems unlikely, as he's already spent close to three years developing a video game to accompany and expand the scope and history of the new Mad Max tale.
Worthington, or whoever takes on the lead male role, will not be playing Max Rockatansky. If director George Miller sticks to the Fury Road script that is being used to develop the video game, the new 'Max' will be a modified clone of the original Max, with most of the action set way into the future.
Here's a summary of the Fury Road script as it read back in the early 2000s :
The new film is set two centuries on from where we last left Max, wandering the wastelands at the end of third instalment, Beyond Thunderdome.
While the first two films saw women and gasoline as being the most precious resources left to be plundered by biker road armies, and water became a plot catalyst in Beyond Thunderdome, this time around the unpolluted DNA of human 'pure breeds' will be the treasure all seek to possess.
Gibson's Max is expected to show up in the new film in flashbacks, to reveal what happened to him in the last years of his life, before the new Max, a 'son' derived from his DNA, takes over the story.
The new Max's mission will be to act as a 'protector' and escort a group of non-mutants across the wastelands with their precious stock of unpolluted DNA. This pure DNA stock is desired by the mutant hordes, as it can be used to clean up their genes, and make them resistant to the radioactivity that still infects the land.
If you don't think a 3D CGI-anime Mad Max movie can work, wait until you see what James Cameron has achieved with Avatar, due for release in December.
George Miller will not be able to resist the temptation to try and make his movie even more spectacular, more mind-blowing, than Cameron's.
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