UPDATED: Director George Miller steams ahead on Mad Max sequel, casts leads

The good thing about being Australian director George Miller right now is that when one project stalls, he’s got another to fall back on.

The project of his that has supposedly been stalled is Justice League due to Warner Bros. moving up production on the Ryan Reynolds-starring Green Lantern which—according to a bit in the New Orleans’ Times-Picayune that got run all over the blogosphere—is setting up production offices and stages there and not in Australia due to the exchange rate.

This economic factor and reporter Mike Scott’s assertion that Lantern and the Flash and Wonder Woman films will be a lead-up to League means that Miller’s going to have some time on his hands—which he is choosing to fill by going back to work on the third Mad Max sequel, now called Mad Max: Fury Road.

The article that’s running in Sydney’s Daily Telegraph is just as sparse with concrete details as the Times-Picayune‘s is, but there are a lot of juicy quotes to pour over and names to Google:

The Daily Telegraph has learned that work on the film will start immediately, injecting tens of millions of dollars into the economy and creating more than 500 jobs.

Much of the work will be done at Redfern’s CarriageWorks and there will also be 30 weeks of filming in Broken Hill. It is estimated the whole project will take two-and-a-half years to complete, create 540 jobs and generate countless millions.

Miller, himself, chimed in as well:

“Hollywood has cut its production in half. Big movies like Fury Road and Happy Feet are rare and competitively sought after in all the filmmaking regions of the world,” he said. “The production agreements have been a long time in the making and Premier Nathan Rees and his team have worked like Trojans to ensure this substantial investment comes into this country. Not only does it help fuel the local economy but it means many talented people get a chance to practise their craft and lift their skills.”

However, there was no mention in the article of whether or not Miller was going to continue with the idea of making this an anime movie; with all the talk of creating jobs and whatnot, I am starting to doubt that development in the project.

Updated on 10/29: Variety‘s Dave McNary and every other scribe in the movie biz must have been working overtime because there are some more concrete details to add to this production news.

Even though no one knows exactly what the plot will be, Miller was able to reveal that Charlize Theron and British actor Tom Hardy (Black Hawk Down) will star in Mad Max: Fury Road, but he wouldn’t confirm that Hardy would be leading male or whether or not Mel Gibson would return to the series.

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