Furiosa’s Development Hell and Box Office Downfall, Explained

In the early 2010s, nobody would have expected that George Miller’s return with a fourth Mad Max film would be anything too groundbreaking or memorable. It had been 30 years since the last movie in the series, 1985’s Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome, hit theaters, and at that point, the director was best known for films like Babe: Pig in the City, Happy Feet, and the canceled Justice League Mortal film that never got off the ground. However, when Mad Max: Fury Road hit theaters in 2015, Miller delivered one of the most mind-melting and relentlessly stunning action films in cinematic history.

In the aftermath of Fury Road, Miller had established himself as a director you could never bet against. The fourth Mad Max film was arguably the most successful in the franchise to date. Miller also confirmed at the time that he was already hard at work on not one but two follow-up films that would build on the world of Mad Max as it had been depicted in Fury Road. Then, nine years would go by before the first of these films, Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga, would open in theaters. The result of which has almost certainly put an end to the franchise for the time being. Despite the incredible work Miller did with Furiosa, the film has unfortunately failed to recapture the magic of Fury Road both culturally and at the box office.

The Success of Mad Max: Fury Road

First, we must acknowledge the incredibly high bar set for Furiosa by its predecessor, Mad Max: Fury Road, almost a decade ago. When Fury Road was produced, it was a bit of a wildcard in the summer movie season. However, when it was unleashed upon the world, it immediately began making waves. To this day, it still holds an incredibly impressive 97% approval rating from critics on Rotten Tomatoes, with an audience score of 86% to boot. It was able to keep this momentum going for almost an entire year, leading into the 2016 Oscars, where it was nominated for 10 awards, including Best Picture and Best Director. It ended up winning six of those awards – Production Design, Sound Editing, Sound Mixing, Makeup and Hairstyling, Costume Design, and Film Editing.

However, for all the praise Fury Road got, its box office results are often assumed to be much higher than they actually were. Fury Road was far from the highest-grossing movie of 2015; in fact, it failed to even break the top 20 both domestically and worldwide. The movie was a success, having pulled in $153 million in North America and a total of $379 million globally. However, it wasn’t nearly the box office juggernaut that could be assumed based on the reputation it has developed over the last decade. With a $150 million budget, pulling in just under $380 globally isn’t an outstanding result, but it is a decent one that, when combined with the overwhelming acclaim it received, more than justifies moving forward with another Mad Max film.

George Miller and WB’s Dispute Over Mad Max

While Miller’s first film to follow Fury Road was 2022’s Three Thousand Years of Longing, a fantasy drama loosely based on A.S. Byatt’s The Djinn in the Nightingale’s Eye, the director was quick to begin work on Furiosa after the success of Fury Road. However, much of this work was stalled due to a lawsuit between Miller and Warner Bros, the studio that had distributed the fourth Mad Max outing.

In late 2017, just over two years after the release of Fury Road, Miller filed a suit against WB, claiming that the studio had failed to deliver the salary as agreed upon in their contract. Specifically, Miller claimed the contract included a bonus payout if he brought the film in under budget, which he had. However, WB argued that that bonus was nullified because they had been promised a PG-13 movie less than two hours long, not the R-rated Fury Road, which came in at almost exactly two hours.

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This lawsuit put any real development of a Fury Road follow-up on pause. While Miller stated that he was still very interested in returning to the franchise, he would not be doing any work on it until everything was cleared up with WB. Ultimately, this would drag out for a few years before Miller and WB ultimately settled in early 2020. By then, Miller was already deep in development on Three Thousand Years of Longing, which he had committed to start shooting in early 2020. Then, however, the COVID-19 global pandemic delayed everything once again. This kicked Furiosa even further down the road, as Three Thousand Years of Longing did not begin production until the last couple of months in 2020.

Miller spent much of his time in the early pandemic balancing the development and pre-production of both Three Thousand Years of Longing and Furiosa. He had been auditioning performers for the Mad Max spin-off over Skype, and the announcement that Anya Taylor-Joy would be stepping into the eponymous role came in late 2020. With Three Thousand Years of Longing first up on Miller’s docket, though, Furiosa wasn’t able to begin shooting until the summer of 2022.

Furiosa’s Delay Doomed Its Box Office

Now that Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga has finally hit theaters, fans can once again return to the post-apocalyptic Australian Wasteland for an outstanding theatrical experience. The only problem is that not many people are interested in doing that. The film opened over the Memorial Day weekend in the US, and it was one of the worst openings over that long holiday weekend in decades. With a $32 million opening over the four-day weekend, Furiosa fell far below expectations, and it was substantially below the $45 million that Fury Road had opened with in its debut three-day weekend in 2015. For further context, Fury Road’s second weekend at the box office was also over the Memorial Day holiday, and its week two numbers were almost exactly the same as Furiosa’s debut – $31 million over the four-day weekend.

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While there are a lot of factors that can influence a film’s box office success or lack thereof, the list of things that went wrong with Furiosa is pretty slim. It has experienced much of the same critical and audience acclaim as Fury Road, with a 90% score from both critics and audiences on Rotten Tomatoes, and its B+ CinemaScore is the same rating that audiences gave Fury Road upon its opening. From what we can see with Furiosa, the people still interested in the Mad Max franchise were very pleased with this last entry; it seems there has been a substantial fall-off in interest over the last nine years.

Ultimately, Furiosa’s lackluster results at the box office resulted from WB and Miller failing to strike while the iron was hot. In the first few years after Fury Road’s release, there was a lot of excitement about the future of Mad Max, but as time has passed and we’ve continued into the new decade, audiences have largely moved on to other things. This isn’t solely a Mad Max problem, as we’ve seen other major franchises, such as the Marvel Cinematic Universe, begin to stumble as well, but it’s a discouraging development regarding the overall future of the series. For now, Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga is playing in theaters.