10 Movies That Spent Decades In Development Hell

Mad Max: Fury Road's torturous road to cinemas ultimately turned out to be worth it; not only did it earn $378.9m at the box office and quickly establish a well-deserved reputation as one of the greatest action movies ever made, it also made waves at the Academy Awards where it wound up nominated for ten awards including Best Picture and Best Director, ultimately winning six in the technical categories.

Not bad for a project that was delayed more times than a replacement bus service.

Fury Road's journey to the big screen is nothing short of incredible; George Miller reacquired the rights in 1995, came up with the story in 1998, and hoped to have the movie in front of cameras by 2001. Obviously, this didn't happen.

Budget concerns were the first snag to hit the project, but by 2003 a script was written and it was ready to go. Until unexpected rainfall ruined the Australian shooting locations, forcing the project to move to Namibia. Only it didn't, due to security concerns.

By 2009, a fourth Mad Max was announced again, this time as a 3D R-rated animated feature. But only a matter of months later, Miller revealed that principal photography on the live-action movie would start in early 2011, with Tom Hardy signing on to play the title character in mid-2010.

In what must have been an incredible sense of deja vu for Miller and his crew, heavy rain saw the Australian locations unusable and the shoot moved to... that's right, Namibia. After much speculation that the movie would never even get made at all, cameras finally started rolling in June 2012.

Of course, in typical Fury Road fashion it would be almost three years after shooting commenced that it finally landed in theaters. Luckily for us, George Miller's labor of love outstripped even the most optimistic of projections, delivering a stone-cold action classic.