Mad Max Will Have a Life After George Miller

Fresh off the success of “Fury Road,” writer and director George Millerhas two more “Mad Max”scriptsin the worksalready —largely because the lengthy delays on the last film gave him and fellow writer Nico Lathouris plenty of time to dive deep into the backstories of thecharacters. “Pretty soon we had what happened to Max after ‘Fury Road,’ what happened before, what happened to the other characters, how it evolved.” Considering Miller is now 70 years old, and that it took 15years to make “Fury Road,” we wondered: what if heretires before all of his post-apocalypticdreams make it to the big screen?

Unlike George Lucas, who now regretshanding off his Star Wars franchise, Miller saysthat he is absolutely willing to let another director take over the keys to the Mad Max kingdom. And he’s genuinely excited about the crop of young directors he might get to choose from. “People are directing younger and younger, they’re getting a real sense of cinema very, very early, and there’s some great directors out there,” he says. “You see films every day and you know it’s a good film because you get excited by the possibility of cinema. You walk out of the movies thinking, ‘Oh, anything’s possible!'” Would he be willing toleaveMad Maxin an up-and-coming director’s hands? “Yeah, of course.”

Listen to a bit of their conversation above — you can hearKurt Andersen’s full conversation with George Miller on next week’s show.