Mad Mel to hit the road again - Tuesday December 10, 2002 - The Guardian

Mel Gibson is to play Mad Max for the fourth time in return for a $25m pay packet. The 46-year-old actor will once again step into the wasted landscape of a dystopian future Australia for a project titled Fury Road, reportedly costing $104m.

According to Daily Variety, the movie will start shooting down under next May, with the franchise's three-time director and co-writer George Miller once more in the director's seat. Miller has reportedly been working on the script for the past three years.

No plot details have yet emerged but it's a fair bet that "Mad" Max Rockatansky will once again be roaming the lawless, post-apocalyptic Australian outback.

Mad Max originally hit cinemas in 1979 and made a worldwide star of Gibson, who was born in America but moved to Australia as a child when his father won a prize on the gameshow Jeopardy. A sequel followed in 1981 and the most recent in the franchise, Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome, co-starring Tina Turner, hit cinemas in 1985.

Gibson, who won a best director Oscar for 1995's Braveheart, has been seen this year in M Night Shyamalan's supernatural thriller Signs.

--SWEET!