Why Mad Max’s TV Show Never Happened (How It Led To Fury Road)
In the mid-'90s there was huge hype around a Mad Max television show that never entered production, prompting some franchise fans to wonder what happened to the potentially exciting project. The Mad Max series has a messy trajectory. Beginning as a low-budget cult hit that exceeded expectations in its native Australia and became a massive financial success worldwide, Mad Max soon spawned sequels that opened up its fictional universe and grew gradually more elaborate and ambitious in scope.
However, although critic Roger Ebert loved 1985’s Beyond Thunderdome, the movie’s otherwise muted critical reception and leading man Mel Gibson’s increasingly busy schedule led the Mad Max creators to take a break from the franchise in the late-'80s. Little did they know that this break would end up lasting three decades and eventually resulted in Gibson being recast as the actor aged out of the role. In 1995, though, it seemed as though the character of Mad Max was destined for a new life—on the small screen.
Related: Mad Max: Everything Wrong With Furiosa’s Comic Backstory
A Mad Max television show was announced with a Variety ad in 1995, and soon become the subject of intense hype. As such, many fans have wondered over the years why the show never materialized and whether its cancellation indirectly lead to 2015’s belatedMad Max sequel, Fury Road. For a long time, this seemed, like Fury Road’s closing quote, to be yet another Mad Max mystery that would go unsolved by fans. Fortunately, critic/film historian Kyle Buchanan’s 2022 book Blood, Sweat & Chrome: The Wild and True Story of Mad Max: Fury Road has shed new light on both the doomed television show the sci-fi franchise almost produced and its surprising relation to Fury Road.
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