George Miller is still mulling over more Mad Max

Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga is miles away from speeding into theaters worldwide, which means fans are already asking for just one thing—more. Unfortunately, there’s no big sequel announcement here; technically, as Furiosa goes back in the story’s timeline to track the origins of Charlize Theron’s original character (played by Anya Taylor-Joy in the new film), 2015's Mad Max: Fury Road is its sequel. Still, it sounds like director George Miller isn’t ready to let the franchise die historic just yet.

“There are certainly other stories there. Mainly because in order to tell the story of Fury Road, we had to know the backstory of Furiosa and Max in the year before,” Miller said at a press conference after Furiosa’s Cannes premiere last night (via The Hollywood Reporter). “That was a tool for the cast and crew. We know the Max story from the year before. I’ll definitely wait to see how this [Furiosa] goes, before we even think about it.”

That means there’s already the seed of another, Max-themed prequel out there, which Miller actually discussed with The A.V. Club back in 2022. “We also wrote, not a screenplay, but almost in novel form… what happened to Max in that year before, and that’s something that we’ll look at further down the track later,” he said.

This is also the origin story for Furiosa’s script, which Miller said was “virtually complete” before he even started shooting Fury Road. “When we wrote Mad Max, the task was to tell a story that was always on the run and to see how much the audience could pick up in passing,” he said, explaining that the world building contained in that early Furiosa draft—and now fully realized on screen—was originally just meant for the 2015 film’s cast and crew so they could better understand their characters.

“The feeling was, gee, this is a pretty good screenplay, and then I kept saying to myself, ‘If Fury Road works, I’d really like to tell this story,’” he told The A.V. Club in the same interview. That’s almost the exact same thing he said about Furiosa last night, and at least in this writer’s opinion (who’s already seen the film), it definitely seems like the prequel will be a certified hit.

That next stop may be the Max prequel, it may be an origin story for the series’ main antagonist Immortan Joe (as predicted by Deadline), or it could even be the long-rumored Fury Road sequel, Mad Max: The Wasteland. Whatever it is (if it does end up happening), it will almost definitely be like nothing we’ve ever seen before. “If you are just repeating what you’ve done, there’s no appetite to do that,” Miller said during last night’s press conference. “I’ve often wondered, ‘Am I crazy?’ Then I realize I’m driven by my curiosity. I feel that I’m learning.”

Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga opens May 24 in theaters.