SYDNEY — Filming on Mad Max: Fury Road is ready to roll in early 2012, in and around the outback New South Wales town of Broken Hill after it was announced Tuesday that production company Kennedy Miller Mitchell has signed a two-year lease for the use of the new Broken Hill Film Studios.
Broken Hill mayor Wincen Cuy said that the area “Council and Kennedy Miller Mitchell have consistently worked together to make the film studio a reality and reach this historic agreement and Council is very pleased to confirm the studio now has its first long-term tenant.”
The lease includes a further extension for KMM if required.
The fourth installment in the Mad Max franchise was slated to shoot in late 2010, but unseasonal rains caused the desert, critical to the films post-apocalyptic setting, to erupt with wildflowers. January and February saw floods hit the area.
Miller told News Limited newspapers last week that he was looking to an early 2012 start date for shooting.
“We’ve built the vehicles. We’ve designed the movie. The principal cast is locked in. The film is funded. It’s all ready to go. We just wait,” he said.
“All the contracts are signed. It’s a locked-in film. It has been for 18 months now. We will restart pre-production later this year and begin early next year – weather permitting.”
British actor Tom Hardy will take the lead role in the movie, which will also star Charlize Theron, Nicholas Hoult and Teresa Palmer.
The Broken Hill Film Studios will be the fifth-largest in the country with the local council spending $2 million to renovate the city’s old power station to date.
“It is envisaged that once fully developed, the combined film studio and precinct will generate over 10 years an estimated AUS$167 milion ($169 million) in indirect benefits to Broken Hill with an average of 161 full-time time equivalent jobs per annum,” Cuy said.
“This is in addition to the AUD$700,000 per year that is already spent by film and media production companies in Broken Hill. During the past five years, a new film and media production has opened in Broken Hill around every three weeks and since 1982, well over 300 new film and media productions have been shot in and around Broken Hill,” Mayor Cuy said.
Miller in the meantime has been working on Happy Feet 2, which is due to release in November.
Warner Bros. is distributing both films.
