Mad Max: Fury Road Will Be Released In May, May Of 2015

By Brent McKnight | Published

This article is more than 2 years old

Mad Max Fury RoadHey, remember when you thought that you were finally going to get to see George Miller’s long-awaited return to the post-apocalyptic wastes next year when Mad Max: Fury Road hit theaters? Sorry to be a buzzkill, but that’s not going to happen. Not even close. The good news is that Warner Bros. has finally tagged the further adventures of Max Rockatansky with a solid release date, the bad news is that it isn’t until May 15, 2015. This leaves plenty of time for the hand of God, fate, or a vengeful production assistant to wipe the troubled film from existence.

This move adds Fury Road to an already packed, not to mention epic, slate of movies for the summer of 2015. In fact, the movie is now sandwiched between two other big releases. The week before, Brad Bird’s mysterious Tomorrowland opens, and the week after sees the return of Earth’s Mightiest Heroes, with The Avengers: Age of Ultron. So even if Fury Road rules the box office over its debut, there’s no way in hell that trend continues for more than a week. Perhaps the studio is banking on an older audience, one that grew up on the adventures of Mel Gibson tearing ass through the desert in a tricked out muscle car.

Though principal photography on Fury Road finished almost a year ago, wrapping up in December 2012, the production recently went back for a series of reshoots. Such a move can often be a sign of problems, in this case the reports stated that more could be a very good thing indeed. Apparently the purpose of additional time was to beef up one big action sequence, as well as adding some more scenes. Whatever the studio saw in the rough cuts, they decided they like it, and want more.

A prime summer release date also indicates Warner thinks they have a hit on their hands. That’s valuable real estate and isn’t given away lightly. With the extent of the reshoots, pushing for a summer 2014 release was probably overly ambitious, plus most of those slots are already filled. I was hoping we’d see Fury Road later in 2014, perhaps November or December, but that is obviously not going to happen. Still, though the wait may be longer than we like, all the signs point to this being the movie that we all hoped it would be.

We don’t know much about the plot, but Mad Max: Fury Road has been described as one long chase scene and stunt sequence. That right there is enough to get most of us interested, but the fact that Miller has put together a rather incredible cast doesn’t hurt our enthusiasm either. Tom Hardy takes over the Max role, while a shaved-head Charlize Theron plays Imperator Furiosa. No one knows what that means, but it sounds awesome. Nicholas Hoult, Zoe Kravitz, Nathan Jones, and Rosie Huntington-Whitely also appear, and Hugh Keays-Byrne, who you’ll remember as the Toecutter in Mad Max, is back, but in another part.