20 Things You Didn't Know About Mad Max: Fury Road
7. Miller Was Forced To Cut The Beginning And End
With a crew ranging between 1,200-1,700 people, some 200-odd vehicles and dozens of actors to wrangle into one cohesive unit, it’s fair to say George Miller had a lot on his plate as the production entered full swing.
Filmmaking on a grand scale always carries with it any number of technical and organisational challenges, but Miller soon found himself having to contend with an entirely unforeseen problem. As fellow producer Doug Mitchell explains:
“By the time we got to Namibia, the cost and the additional expense of getting there required us to cut back on what we were going to shoot. The sacrifice was to cut off the start and the end of the film. George wisely agreed that was the way to go because at least we could get all the action in the desert, which was what we needed – the essence of the film. We'd find somehow, later on, a way to cope with the problem.”
It was no longer viable for Miller and Co. to film on location for 150 days as planned. Instead, they cut the Namibian shoot to 100 days and spent a further three weeks in a South African film studio.