Fury Road will either be a blockbuster or a bomb.

[MWFV8]

The economics in the movie industry are all about the opening weekend, anything after that is gravy, the DVD market has recently imploded.

FR has everything going for it, it's already a well respected franchise and has the budget and sensation behind it to get a lot of media attention.

There's no way in hell the studio will settle for an NC-17 rating, that's economic suicide for a US film. It'll be most likely a PG-15 since I doubt it's going to contain scenes with drugs or full frontal male nudity.

Will the plot have the depth of Road Warrior with its humanity B-story? We're in no position to speculate, all we do know is Miller has proved he can do it before and, as long term fans of his work, we should have faith in him being able to pull it off again.

[chrisjames61]

Here is to hoping!

[blackmocco]

It will sink like a stone at the box office if it's released as an R. As much as I'd love an adult version of Max for the 21st century, as stated before, Dredd proved there's no money to be made releasing it for a niche audience. Fast and The Furious movies have proven there's a huge audience for fast cars and mayhem and it's all PG-13.

[kickherintheguts]

It will sink like a stone at the box office if it's released as an R. As much as I'd love an adult version of Max for the 21st century, as stated before, Dredd proved there's no money to be made releasing it for a niche audience. Fast and The Furious movies have proven there's a huge audience for fast cars and mayhem and it's all PG-13.

You could be right but the Mad Max Franchise has a lot more clout than Dredd. I notice a lot of people make the comparisons of the new Mad Max movie to Prometheus. I don't know if it's apples to apples but there was a big clamor to make Prometheus an R rated flick and they actually had to balls to do so. Not only that, Prometheus made over 400 million dollars at the B.O., most of it "overseas". Plus, does Miller really want to make another PG-13 Mad Max flick, especially when we all know how lame and a sell-out MMBD was?

Anyway, the pics from MM4 that we've seen so far seem pretty cool. Maybe we should all be grateful that we're living in a time that Mad Max 4 is actually being filmed. To me this is an incredible, exciting time that not only harks back to my exciting 80's youth but to the realization that we might just see another great, post-apocalyptic film (and not some PG-13 cheese-fest) from a legendary director named George Miller.

The odds are against him, yet he plods ahead, keeps the lid tight and you never know, he might blow our minds one more time.

[boomerang]

Regardless of financial success...

Dredd was excellent, and was one of the best hard R at ion films I've seen in a while. If FR is great, but flops, than I don't really care. I just hope it's a film that we can all be excited about.

[pauli77]

It will sink like a stone at the box office if it's released as an R. As much as I'd love an adult version of Max for the 21st century, as stated before, Dredd proved there's no money to be made releasing it for a niche audience. Fast and The Furious movies have proven there's a huge audience for fast cars and mayhem and it's all PG-13.

You could be right but the Mad Max Franchise has a lot more clout than Dredd. I notice a lot of people make the comparisons of the new Mad Max movie to Prometheus. I don't know if it's apples to apples but there was a big clamor to make Prometheus an R rated flick and they actually had to balls to do so. Not only that, Prometheus made over 400 million dollars at the B.O., most of it "overseas". Plus, does Miller really want to make another PG-13 Mad Max flick, especially when we all know how lame and a sell-out MMBD was?

Anyway, the pics from MM4 that we've seen so far seem pretty cool. Maybe we should all be grateful that we're living in a time that Mad Max 4 is actually being filmed. To me this is an incredible, exciting time that not only harks back to my exciting 80's youth but to the realization that we might just see another great, post-apocalyptic film (and not some PG-13 cheese-fest) from a legendary director named George Miller.

The odds are against him, yet he plods ahead, keeps the lid tight and you never know, he might blow our minds one more time.

I kind of agree and disagree with you.

I orginally mentioned Dredd and you are probably correct about the potential audience for a Max film vs Dredd, in film terms (the later has been very successful in comic book form). However, I think to compare it to Prometheus is a false step.

Prometheus had the addition of a franchise that was relevant to all kinds of audiences. The Alien franchise (whether they were good films or not) last had a film out in 2007 and a video game in 2010. It's a franchise that is current within popular culture; Max just isn't in the same way and I think we have to be honest about that despite the quality, importance and appeal of Mad Max and Road Warrior.

In truth it will come down to marketing or whether the film is good or both. I guess it always does..

[chrisjames61]

It will sink like a stone at the box office if it's released as an R. As much as I'd love an adult version of Max for the 21st century, as stated before, Dredd proved there's no money to be made releasing it for a niche audience. Fast and The Furious movies have proven there's a huge audience for fast cars and mayhem and it's all PG-13.

You could be right but the Mad Max Franchise has a lot more clout than Dredd. I notice a lot of people make the comparisons of the new Mad Max movie to Prometheus. I don't know if it's apples to apples but there was a big clamor to make Prometheus an R rated flick and they actually had to balls to do so. Not only that, Prometheus made over 400 million dollars at the B.O., most of it "overseas". Plus, does Miller really want to make another PG-13 Mad Max flick, especially when we all know how lame and a sell-out MMBD was?

Anyway, the pics from MM4 that we've seen so far seem pretty cool. Maybe we should all be grateful that we're living in a time that Mad Max 4 is actually being filmed. To me this is an incredible, exciting time that not only harks back to my exciting 80's youth but to the realization that we might just see another great, post-apocalyptic film (and not some PG-13 cheese-fest) from a legendary director named George Miller.

The odds are against him, yet he plods ahead, keeps the lid tight and you never know, he might blow our minds one more time.

I kind of agree and disagree with you.

I orginally mentioned Dredd and you are probably correct about the potential audience for a Max film vs Dredd, in film terms (the later has been very successful in comic book form). However, I think to compare it to Prometheus is a false step.

Prometheus had the addition of a franchise that was relevant to all kinds of audiences. The Alien franchise (whether they were good films or not) last had a film out in 2007 and a video game in 2010. It's a franchise that is current within popular culture; Max just isn't in the same way and I think we have to be honest about that despite the quality, importance and appeal of Mad Max and Road Warrior.

In truth it will come down to marketing or whether the film is good or both. I guess it always does..

You made a good point. The Alien franchise, whether most of the movies are good or not is currently fresh in movie goers minds. I first saw MMI and MMII in 1982. A long time ago. Beyond Thunderdome came out in 1985 and imho isn't even a Mad Max movie. So to me Mad Max has last been an active franchise in the early 1980's. Most people under 40 don't have a clue who Mad Max is.

[MWFV8]

There's two ways in which a franchise can boost sales. Firstly is the obvious appeal to a profitable audience, but secondly, there is the appeal within the media. We've already seen that, despite the age of the franchise, there's been a lot of interest in Fury Road and millions of dollars worth of free PR has already been generated. In fact we've recently seen there's so much interest in production they are effectively barricading themselves from the media for now.

It's very difficult to traditionally market a movie into profitability, the cost of doing so can easily out pace sales. An example is Michael Bay's 'The Island' which I believe didn't even cover it's own marketing budget in box office sales, never mind production costs.

Personally I really hope it performs well in sales, even if it's a bad movie. I have a lot of admiration for George Miller and Brendan McCarthy and want them to succeed.

[boomerang]

Honestly, I really don't know how much interest is out there. I mean, look at this site. There really aren't too many of us dropping by each day. Back in 1997, when new Star Wars info was showing up on line, the forums were packed and constantly active. Any picture that showed up had dozens of pages of speculation and discussion. Granted, that was SW, and SW is huger than huge.

[Chase Bansi]

Apples and oranges. Different type of fans altogether. I expect after the film comes out there will be a bigger swell in membership. The true test is which ones stay and which are just riding the hype. Many long time members have fallen silent, either avoiding spoilers or turned off by what they have seen. For the longest time the replica forum was the most active. Undoubtedly replicars for Fury Road are going to be more difficult due to their shear size, engineering, and expense.

It is difficult to gauge how well it will do financially. We have been waiting for this for so long patience has been exhausted and some have given up. Regardless of how it does, fans will be quite polarized. Some will love it and embrace it as Mad Max cannon, while others will hate it and proclaim it unworthy much in the same way as ThunderDome. It may be the greatest film of the year and still not be the highest grossing film of the year. Success is in the eye of the beholder.