Flame-spouting guitar in hand, George Miller’s Mad Max: Fury Road appears to be on the verge of returning to theaters in 2016 like you’ve never seen it before.
Originally teased around the film’s rip-roaring release earlier this year, Screen Daily has unearthed a new report that suggests Miller’s magnum opus could finally release a black and white cut, with producer Doug Mitchell noting that it “could yet receive a theatrical release” at some point next year.
Indeed, there’s certainly a demand for the color-drained version of Miller’s post-apocalyptic thriller, given that it was seemingly ready to be included in Fury Road‘s Blu-ray release. Alas, said cut didn’t feature, and now all eyes have turned to Warner Bros. in anticipation of an official announcement. Of course, re-releasing the film would be a logical decision for the studio in that it would welcome a second boon in box office receipts; Mad Max: Fury Road may exist as a critical darling, but it’s no secret that it failed to light up the box office in the way WB would have hoped.
Could we see Furiosa’s kingdom-shaking antics on the big screen once more? It appears closer than ever before. What’s interesting, though, is that Miller had contemplated releasing Fury Road in its purest form: stripping out the dialogue for a black and white showcase that only featured the rousing score. Here’s what the director had to share with /Film at this time.
There’s only two ways to go, make them black and white — the best version of this movie is black and white, but people reserve that for art movies now. The other version is to really go all-out on the color. The usual teal and orange thing? That’s all the colors we had to work with. The desert’s orange and the sky is teal, and we either could de-saturate it, or crank it up, to differentiate the movie. Plus, it can get really tiring watching this dull, de-saturated color, unless you go all the way out and make it black and white.
Would you be interested to see the color-drained version of the Wasteland in Mad Max: Fury Road? Let us know below.