Subject to how strongly Mad Max: Fury Road performs globally, George Miller says the fifth edition of his action franchise will be called Mad Max: The Wasteland.
The director has revealed there are two other scripts, one a novella, the other what he describes as an “an in-between birth.”
In the meantime, the prequel stories of the principle characters of Fury Road will be chronicled in a series of comics from DC Entertainment's Vertigo Comics.
The first issue, which launches in the US this week, explores the earlier days of Immortan Joe (Hugh Keays-Byrne) and Nux (Nicholas Hoult), one of Joe's loyal War Boys.
The saga of how Charlize Theron's Imperator Furiosa met the Immortan's five wives will be released on June 17.
Two further chapters focusing on Tom Hardy’s Max Rockatansky and a hazardous trip to Gastown and Thunderdome Plus will come out on July 8 and August 5, culminating in a special hardcover edition of the stories on August 26.
Each priced at $US4.99, the comics are co-written by Mark Sexton, Nico Lathouris and Miller.
Miller revealed the Wasteland title in a podcast with US commentator Jeff Goldsmith, while explaining that the lengthy delays in shooting Fury Road gave him and co-writers Brendan McCarthy and Lathouris the time to work on other stories.
In an earlier interview with ComingSoon.net, he said, “We have come up with three other stories. One is written as a screenplay, one is a novella and one is an in-between birth. Depending on how this goes and whether or not I’ve got the appetite to head back out into the wasteland, we’ll see.”
Asked if he could ever contemplate handing the franchise to another director, he said, “It’d be great to work with other filmmakers as well. I mean, sitting here right now, I don’t know. But I’d love to see what someone else could do if they took one of these stories.”
As IF reported, the actioner raked in $US109.4 million in its opening weekend in the US and 68 international markets. Still to come are Japan on June 20 and China.