The ‘Mad Max: Fury Road’ Game Was Three Gaming Companies In The Making

It seems there has been just as many drama getting the Mad Max: Fury Road game to see the light of day as it was for the movie of the same name. The official Mad Max: Fury Road game has been released by Avalanche. However, this gaming company is the third in line to get the rights to this much sought after game.

Originally, Brian Fargo from Interplay pitched his version of the Mad Max game after sharing a flight with Mad Max creator, George Miller, nearly 20 years ago according to his interview with Kokatu.

“I got to fly with him to Whistler, Canada, on the Universal private jet — because Universal used to own half of Interplay — and spend three hours with him. The Road Warrior was my favourite movie for a decade. I’d watch it over and over again so I was a huge fan of Miller’s. [He] was familiar with Wasteland and Fallout and loved the work we’d done. So half of the ride was us fanboying and half was ‘OK, let’s do something’.”

Fargo got the opportunity to meet up with George Miller again after that flight, and the tentative beginnings of a party-based RPG version of Mad Max: Fury Road was born. The plan was to incorporate vehicles from the movie franchise.

However, news was starting to circulate about this game and a new contender entered the market. Hollywood Reporter and Daily Variety ran stories on the potential Mad Max game and that’s when EA Games came knocking on the door with a $20 million carrot George Miller just couldn’t refuse. “Ah, Brian, I like you but I don’t like you that much,” he told Fargo before signing on with EA Games.

What happened after that was the complicated process of trying to get a movie made. Besides hopping between production studios, the movie also ran into other delays and it was years before the movie saw the light of day. As a result, George Miller never got that carrot from EA Games due to Warner Bros. stripping the rights from them.

In the end it was Warner Bros. who decided the ultimate gaming rights, and that is how Avalanche ended up with their latest Mad Max game.

But Brian Fargo and Interplay never lost their Mad Max gaming dream, instead channeling his energies into creating Mad Max Easter eggs in subsequent Fallout games.

[Image credit: Avalanche Studios]