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.

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 belated Mad 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.

Mad Max’s Canceled TV Show

While going through the list of intellectual properties they owned the rights to and could potentially reinvent as television shows, Warner Bros decided that the Mad Max movies were one of the studio’s best bets for a profitable franchise. Despite obvious logistical issues (like recasting Mel Gibson’s Mad Max as the actor’s salary surpassed television budgets), the studio was eager to get series creator George Miller on board with the idea and thought the series had huge potential as a marketing opportunity. Per Ron Hayes, a former SVP of Warner Bros Toys, one meeting with a Toys “R” Us buyer ended with the eager toy seller saying “if you can make Mad Max toys, I’ll buy everything.” Around the same time, R-rated sci-fi franchises such as Alien and Robocop were also receiving family-friendly makeovers (some more successful than others) to facilitate tie-in toy lines, and Mad Max was a potential golden goose thanks to the franchise’s cartoony, instantly recognizable characters, and high action quotient.

However, no amount of potential toys could sway an unconvinced George Miller. Miller was interested in a long-from story that could expand the Mad Max fictional universe, but even then he was unconvinced by the prospect of returning to the franchise at all, in either movie or television show form. Former Warner Bros TV SVP Gregg Maday, however, was highly invested in the idea and found the right collaborative talent to make Miller reconsider. 21 Jump Street showrunner Eric Blakeney was tapped for the project and began working on the show with Miller, with the duo immediately hitting it off. The hype was big, but hope for the Mad Max television show faded fast as the two started collaborating in earnest.

Why Mad Max’s TV Show Failed

Although Miller was willing to compromise for TV by cutting the explicit violence of the Mad Max movies, this was not what the network objected to. They found the original movies—and Miller and Blakeney’s new ideas—too “intense” for prime time. Per Miller’s recollection, one dispiriting network censor screening of Mad Max 2: The Road Warrior ended with the censors admitting they had no substantial or specific notes, but “you’ve just got to take the intensity out of it.” Faced with the prospect of sanitizing and neutering his longest-lasting and most influential franchise, Miller was understandably put off the project. Just like that, the same thing that finally sold Miller on the idea of a Mad Max TV show (telling a more long-form, serialized story), ended up putting him off the show when the limitation of television as a medium reared their head. Blakeney also argued that Miller was never whole-heartedly invested in the idea, which adds up given the long breaks between Mad Max movies that arose from the mercurial director only working on the series once he was certain he had a fresh, innovative idea for a sequel.

How Fury Road Came About From Mad Max’s TV Failure

Although Mad Max’s television show never came to fruition, it did introduce Miller to a vital collaborator who went on to help him shape the future of the franchise. Although 20 years passed between Mad Max’s canceled TV show and Fury Road, the television series that never was led Miller to comic artist Brendan McCarthy, who went on to co-write the sequel with him. Miller met with McCarthy after the artist sent him a Road Warrior-inspired episode of a television show he worked on, REBoot, along with a note asking about the future of the Mad Max franchise. At the time that the two met, Miller was still considering the Mad Max television show, although McCarthy bluntly asked why he wouldn’t work on a movie sequel instead.

Brendan McCarthy’s Mad Max 4 Movie Pitch

Involving vials of sperm as a central MacGuffin, McCarthy’s Mad Max 4 pitch was a little too intense for television and cinema alike. Although McCarthy’s treatment for a Mad Max sequel was too wild and weird, some elements of his story ended up shaping Miller’s ideas for Fury Road. Despite the comic book audacity of his treatment (or perhaps because of it), McCarthy’s story pitch impressed Miller, who started working on a movie sequel rather than a television series. Between McCarthy and Miller’s first meeting, there were still decades of delays, false starts, revisions, rewrites, and recasting to go through before viewers got the Mad Max franchise’s fourth movie in 2015. However, the earliest iteration of what would become Fury Road came from their meeting, all prompted by the Mad Max television show that fans never actually got to see.

Kyle Buchanan’s Blood, Sweat & Chrome: The Wild and True Story of Mad Max: Fury Road is out now.

About The Author

Cathal Gunning
(1459 Articles Published)

Cathal Gunning has been writing about movies and TV online since 2020. His obsessions include The Simpsons, Stephen King, the Scream series, and the horror genre in general. He has spent more time thinking about Stranger Things than the writers of Stranger Things, and he has never seen a Star War.

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