“I’d say shoot me”: the movie George Miller said he wouldn’t even make at gunpoint
Now that he’s reached the late stage of his career, George Miller can’t be bothered to direct anything that he isn’t completely committed to.
There are many directors who have dabbled in multiple franchises, like Sam Raimi tackling Spider-Man and Evil Dead, Steven Spielberg doing Indiana Jones and Jurassic Park, and Wes Craven helming A Nightmare on Elm Street and Scream, however, few have worked on two polar opposite franchises as Miller, who, in addition to the iconic post-apocalyptic Mad Max saga, has also directed the two animated Happy Feet films.
To find out why, you have to go back to his finding success as a producer on Babe, after which he decided to direct its sequel, Babe: Pig in the City, indicating his knack for understanding what appeals to younger audiences. Moreover, given how often Miller has enjoyed pushing the boundaries of technology in his work, it made sense that he would want to take up a cutting-edge animation like Happy Feet, and the first one was a pretty substantial success, even winning him his first and only Oscar in the ‘Best Animated Feature’ category.
Thus, the notion of doing a sequel seemed like the only natural course of action, and at the time, he had faced setbacks on his other projects in development, his long-gestating plans for a fourth Mad Max film had faced a multitude of issues, and the planned Justice League film he was working on was abruptly scrapped.
So, instead, he committed to Happy Feet 2, a film that audiences and critics seemed to be less enamoured with, and while neither Happy Feet film is particularly good, it’s hard not to be impressed with how immersed Miller was in the process. At the same time, the commitment it required of him was very draining, which explains why he expressed hesitation about ever making a third film in the animated series.
“If you put a gun to my head and said, ‘You have to come up with a story for Happy Feet 3‘, I’d say shoot me,” he said, “I would have no idea. I really would have no idea. The stories creep up on you. You just have to allow the stories to come, and then they get in like little earworms in your head, and they won’t go away. If that happens and we’ve got the energy, we’ll do a third one.”
The tap-dancing penguins did succeed in proving that Miller was not past his prime, which eventually allowed him to pace forward and finally complete production on Mad Max: Fury Road, the fourth in the Mad Max series, a rare genre film to receive major Academy Award nominations, and was universally hailed as a masterpiece.
What his next steps will be is now unclear, since the enthusiasm for Mad Max: Fury Road unfortunately did not extend to the prequel, Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga, which was a box office flop, despite earning strong reviews.
While its underperformance did dampen expectations for another notch in the series, at this point it seems more likely that Miller would return to Mad Max than he would make another Happy Feet sequel.
