Mel Gibson in 'Fury Road' 2001/2003

[Uncle Entity]

Was he going to star on that? Now I found it quite unlikely.

Miller always contradicts himself about Mel's involvement on that version of the movie.

Did they build any vehicle in 2001 anyway?

[Taipan]

Yes, absolutely.

The film was written for him as the final Mad Max movie.

However, it took a lot of convincing (money) for him to appear. I talked to a lot of people regarding the early days of Fury Road's production and the general consensus is that it wouldn't take a lot for Gibson to abandon that project because he was a bit reluctant to play Max for the 4th time to say the least. So when the film fell over for the first time in 2003 that was that. Although the prospect of him reprising Max once again was still there for a while, Miller was already looking for a new actor to play Max.

As for the cars. Yes, they built some cars in Namibia, but as far as I know only one of them came back from the original shoot of Fury Road. Guess which one it is?

The hero Interceptor car that later showed up in Fury Road. Yep, Max's Interceptor we saw in Fury Road is the only car that survived all those years from the first version of Fury Road up until its actual release in 2015. Although it didn't look like it did in 2015 (2012 actually). I have some pictures of that car waiting to be published in my next video which is about the history of Max's Interceptor from Fury Road. The story of that car is really fascinating although it takes a TON of time to get all the technical details right, there's a lot of confusion as to what that car really is from a technical standpoint. Thankfully with a lot of help from Fury Road's production and good folk from here I managed to track down the original owners and paperwork confirming the origin of the original Fury Road Interceptor. I find it really fascinating that this one particular car managed to survive the first iteration of Fury Road and be re-used in the same movie 9 years later. It's a true piece of history.

As for other cars - there were some other built but just barely, I don't have many pics of those but I've been told certain people might still have info on them and pictures as well, so I'm waiting for that. All I can say for now is that one of the cars became something of an attraction in Namibia, I believe it's still around last time I checked.

[Uncle Entity]

Thank you so much.

I'm asking this because the original version of "Fury Road" was written in July 1999. So, basically, did they build the first vehicles/Junkmobiles and produced the costumes long before 2003? I mean, were they going to film the movie in 2003 and not 2001, as erroneously reported in the early days of the project?
It seems to me that the 2003 incarnation of the movie was going to be more "small-scale" and contained in terms of production values.

Quite weirdly, Mel Gibson played rugged and old action men in movies like "Get the Gringo" (2012) and "Blood Father" (2016), when he was respectively 56 and 60 year old. Thus, having a very old Mad Max played by Mel Gibson would have worked.

I'm asking this because, sometimes, Miller denied Gibson's involvement in the project.

I also think that Mel has a conflictual relationship with Max.

[Taipan]

Thank you so much.

I'm asking this because the original version of "Fury Road" was written in July 1999. So, basically, did they build the first vehicles/Junkmobiles and produced the costumes long before 2003? I mean, were they going to film the movie in 2003 and not 2001, as erroneously reported in the early days of the project?
It seems to me that the 2003 incarnation of the movie was going to be more "small-scale" and contained in terms of production values

The production crew started buying cars around 2002 in Australia and also locally in Namibia in 2003. The vehicles were worked on locally in Namibia by Mark McKinley and Alex Wheeler and his team. There were no vehicles fully built earlier than that. It's hard to tell how big of a scale this movie was going to be because they only managed to finish about 15 vehicles (somewhat) in 10 weeks in Namibia before the production shut down.

Technically Miller is correct in saying that Gibson wasn't ultimately involved in the project. But he was cast, he agreed to play Max, he was promised a ton of money and it was all good to go. The film fell over and poof! Gibson's gone.

But if Miller says that Gibson wasn't at all aware of Fury Road or that he wasn't approached - that would be a lie. Miller invited Gibson to his production offices around 2002 and pitched him the entire film, showed him the storyboards and Gibson spent the entire day with Miller then - that's a story from Mark Sexton who was with them that day.

As far as Gibson's reluctance to play Max - that started way back in the days of MMBT. He didn't want to play Max then either because he didn't want to be typecast. Miller thought the same and at one point they wanted to kill Max at the end of that movie, but didn't. Even the genesis of MMBT was not with Miller aiming to make another Mad Max, the plot of that film just sort of kind of was like Mad Max so they made it into one. Same with Fury Road - Miller didn't want to make it at first but the idea just kept coming back and he obliged and made the film.

[Uncle Entity]

Technically Miller is correct in saying that Gibson wasn't ultimately involved in the project. But he was cast, he agreed to play Max, he was promised a ton of money and it was all good to go. The film fell over and poof! Gibson's gone.

But if Miller says that Gibson wasn't at all aware of Fury Road or that he wasn't approached - that would be a lie. Miller invited Gibson to his production offices around 2002 and pitched him the entire film, showed him the storyboards and Gibson spent the entire day with Miller then - that's a story from Mark Sexton who was with them that day.

That said, Gibson was just 46 at the time. I doubt that he felt "old" at that point.
And I believe that the first version of the movie involved an older Mad Max, gone psychotic.

Probably, Mel underrated George and his capabilities within the scope of this particular project. Probably, Mel convinced himself that the movie wasn't going to work and George couldn't create such a gigantic beast from nothing.

And we already know that Mel was literally shocked by "Fury Road", at the premiere screening, when he watched the movie side by side with Miller for the very first time.

I guess Mel is gonna regret his rejection until the day of his death, IMHO.

[Taipan]

That said, Gibson was just 46 at the time. I doubt that he felt "old" at that point.
And I believe that the first version of the movie involved an older Mad Max, gone psychotic

Mel's age was never the reason why he didn't star in Fury Road. Nor were his antisemitic rants. I know that people tend to blame those things on why he wasn't in the movie but fact of the matter is - he just didn't want to do it. He got pulled into this film with a hefty bag of cash at first but backed out the moment production fell over.

And yes, the first version had Max that was literally insane. There's still some of that stuff left in the final film but it's really toned down. I doubt Mel is regretting not being in this film, the man looked at Fury Road as an opportunity to make some money and end being associated with the character of Max anyway.

[biolumen]

As for the cars. Yes, they built some cars in Namibia, but as far as I know only one of them came back from the original shoot of Fury Road. Guess which one it is?

The hero Interceptor car that later showed up in Fury Road. Yep, Max's Interceptor we saw in Fury Road is the only car that survived all those years from the first version of Fury Road up until its actual release in 2015. Although it didn't look like it did in 2015 (2012 actually).

My personal favorite "discovery" for this site was finding the interceptor on Alex Wheeler's website many years ago.



The original link to apocalyopse.co.za now redirects to his facebook page, but using the internet's wayback machine, I found a snapshot of the original site's gallery page where you can see the interceptor in a thumbnail image.

https://web.archive.org/web/20130727052 ... llery1.htm

I believe Peter later confirmed the car that's pictured is the same car seen in Miller's big, initial Fury Road reveal, although there was some lively debate about that at the time among some members here.

I look forward to reading more about the 2003 incarnation of this movie.

[Uncle Entity]

Mel's age was never the reason why he didn't star in Fury Road. Nor were his antisemitic rants. I know that people tend to blame those things on why he wasn't in the movie but fact of the matter is - he just didn't want to do it.

Yes. I think so.

Well, one thing is for sure, the new generations didn't care. For them, Tom Hardy is Mad Max.

[Morrisminor]

I think this is another survivor from the original planned shoot.

fr02_11.jpg (57.5 KiB) Viewed 29195 times

fr02_10.jpg (117.26 KiB) Viewed 29195 times

[Uncle Entity]

I think that the Mel Gibson Fury Road would have been a bit "smaller" than our Fury Road, in terms of production values.