The success of Venom: Let There Be Carnage reshapes star Tom Hardy’s blockbuster future, so how will the character’s addition to the MCU affect the release of Mad Max 5: The Wasteland? When the original Mad Max was released in 1979, few commentators could have predicted how enduringly popular the Mad Max franchise would prove over the coming decades. The first two Mad Max sequels were box office successes that turned Mel Gibson into a bonafide blockbuster star.
Meanwhile, 2015’s Mad Max: Fury Road surprised critics and fans alike by becoming a major success despite recasting the title character and arriving after the Mad Max franchise’s 30-year absence from theatres. Fans fell in love with star Tom Hardy’s version of Mad Max, and director/creator George Miller announced that there were more sequels to the series in the pipeline. The news was exciting for both longtime fans and newcomers, but six years later, no such follow-up projects have materialized.
Now, the outsized success of Hardy’s latest movie, Venom: Let There Be Carnage, could extend the time between Fury Road and the next Mad Max movie, The Wasteland, even further. Venom: Let There Be Carnage earning almost $300 million and adding Venom to the MCU have both made Hardy’s schedule a lot busier for the foreseeable future, not to mention the fact that the sequel’s success will bolster Hardy’s chances of playing Bond. This means a Mad Max sequel will be pushed further into the background for now as Hardy is incorporated into the sprawling Marvel Cinematic Universe, and the delay of Furiosa’s release provides even more evidence that Hardy’s Mad Max won’t return to screens any time soon.
Miller has announced that Furiosa will detail the backstory of Charlize Theron’s Fury Road character and finally explain the Mad Max’s universe’s offscreen apocalypse. While exciting for fans, these story details make Furiosa the bigger Mad Max movie ever and have resulted in the spinoff’s 2023 release date being pushed further back to 2024. It has already been six years since the success of Fury Road and, with Furiosa now arriving in 2024 at the earliest, the odds are that Hardy will be busy playing Venom (and maybe 007) for years before Mad Max: The Wasteland enters production.
Thanks to the success of his current biggest franchise, a ten-year wait is the minimum fans are likely to see between Mad Max series outings. However, this is not necessarily bad news for fans of Hardy's Mad Max, as the shorter wait between Mad Max: The Road Warrior and Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome resulted in the franchise’s most mixed critical reception. In contrast, although decades passed between Beyond Thunderdome and Fury Road, this improved Fury Road’s reception and resulted in the sequel being considered the best movie of the Mad Max franchise so far. Thus, the news that Venom: Let There Be Carnage’s success could well delay the arrival of Mad Max: The Wasteland is not necessarily bad for the franchise, even if it is frustrating for fans.