George Miller Talks ‘Furiosa’ & Why He’s Still Making ‘Mad Max’ Movies: “They’re Very Addictive” – CinemaCon

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Australian filmmaker George Miller, whose origins story Furiosa will world premiere at the Cannes Film Festival next month before Warner Bros begins its global rollout May 22, says he’s still making Mad Max movies “because they’re very addictive.” Miller was speaking at CinemaCon on Monday in Las Vegas where he received the International Career Achievement in Filmmaking Award.

During a discussion with Warner Bros President of International Theatrical Distribution Andrew Cripps, Miller looked back at his path from medical doctor to director and delved into some of the history of the 1979 classic Mad Max, as well as sharing some insights into the upcoming Furiosa.

Miller, who was “always interested in cinema,” originally trained as a doctor and kept practicing even after he made Mad Max “because even though it was successful, I didn’t think I had it in me to be a filmmaker.” Eventually however, “I kept going.” The impetus for the original Mad Max was sparked when he was a junior doctor and met a policeman who had attended his own son’s fatal accident. “It really stuck with me and one thing led to another and we ended up writing a film.” The idea was to make a movie “that relies entirely on visual language.”  It was not, however, originally conceived as set in an apocalyptic world.

But when Miller found it was “almost impossible to do action sequences in the streets of Melbourne in the city in the modern day … the idea was to set it in a dystopian future simply because we could play in empty streets — and that was a really lucky thing because accidentally the film, which otherwise would have been present-day naturalistic, turned out to be more allegoric, unwittingly, and that’s what led to Mad Max and that’s why I’m