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Chika-Chika! Mad Max? Disaster movie enthusiast and the creator of everyone’s favourite post-apocalyptic wastrel Mad Max, George Miller, has revealed he considered casting rapper Eminem as The Road Warrior after watching Eight Mile. Don’t worry he didn’t want to make it a musical.
Miller made this startling revelation in the book, Blood, Sweat & Chrome by James Buchanan. “He’d done 8 Mile, and I found that really interesting — I thought, ‘He’s got that quality,'” Miller wrote [via Vulture]. “We’d done the first Happy Feet with the late Brittany Murphy, and she had done 8 Mile, so I asked her what he was like and would this be something really interesting for him? She had no reservations about saying what a wonderful talent he is.”
Apparently, Miller and the Mad Max team reached out to Eminem (real name Marshall Mathers), and Mathers was apparently interested; he just had one proviso. “We did get in touch with him, though that’s as far as it went because we were going to shoot it in Australia at that point,” Miller explained. “He simply didn’t want to leave home. I think he had the impression that if he could do it out of his home state, then he’d be up for it.”
Eminem never got to drive Max’s modded Pursuit Special but the rapper’s loss was Tom Hardy’s gain. Hardy played Max in Fury Road a film so widely praised it borders on blasphemy.
It wasn’t just general audiences who lapped up Max’s new incarnation critics and awards bodies loved it as well. Fury Road ended up garnering ten Academy Award nominations and was hailed as one of the best action movies ever made.
Despite its critical and commercial success, the Mad Max franchise slipped back into the pit of development hell. Sequels were announced but they failed to materialise and as time went on it seemed less and less likely that we’d see Max.
Thankfully Miller is close to launching prequel film titled Furiosa, which will focus on the character played by Charlize Theron in Fury Road. Anya Taylor-Joy will play the titular Imperator and she’ll be joined by Chris Hemsworth and Tom Burke.