George Miller’s ‘Mad Max: The Wasteland’ Likely Halted As ‘Furiosa’ Flops At The Global Box Office

Anya Taylor-Joy as Furiosa, Courtesy of Warner Bros.

The visionary George Miller introduced audiences to Mad Max 45 years ago, and has recently unleashed ‘Furiosa’ to the world — which premiered at the Cannes Film Festival on May 15, where the film received a 7-minute standing ovation.

‘Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga’ started with disappointing $32 million domestically for the four-day Memorial Day weekend and $36.5 million overseas, crushing the hopeful second prequel to ‘Fury Road’ which would have been ‘Mad Max: The Wasteland.’

George Miller and Nico Lathouris wrote the scripts for both The Wasteland and Furiosa as part of the development process of ‘Mad Max: Fury Road’ (2015) — the film that became an Academy Award juggernaut, winning six Oscars. ‘Fury Road’ is highly acclaimed as not only the best action film ever, but one of the best films ever made.

‘The Wasteland’ would essentially follow Max Rockatansky (played ideally again by Tom Hardy) in the year before ‘Fury Road,’ and is said to involve a character of a young mother.

“I’ll definitely wait to see how this [Furiosa] goes, before we even think about it,” Miller told journalists on May 16 at a morning press conference at the Cannes Film Festival (post-premiere).

‘Furiosa’ currently has a 90% positive score rating on Rotten Tomatoes by fans and critics. The film’s audience was 71% male and 29% female, a worrisome decline for Warner Bros. and a startling number for a feature with a powerful female lead. The 18 to 24 age group, who are the most frequent moviegoers, plummeted from 31% for ‘Fury Road’ (2015) to 21% for ‘Furiosa’ (2024).

Warner Bros. will be keeping a close eye on the upcoming weekend at the box-office.

Watch a clip from ‘Furiosa’ below: