Tom Hardy doesn’t think ‘Mad Max: The Wasteland’ is happening

Will Tom Hardy return to the Wasteland once again? Likely not.

In conversation with Forbes about his upcoming film The Bikeriders, Hardy was asked about his future in the franchise and George Miller‘s rumored second prequel, said to be named The Wasteland. “I don’t think that’s happening,” Hardy said simply.

Hardy starred opposite Charlize Theron in 2015’s Mad Max: Fury Road, playing two characters who join forces to outrun a tyrannical ruler in a post-apocalyptic desert wasteland. Miller recently released prequel film Furiosa, an origin story of Theron’s title character starring Anya Taylor-Joy as a younger version of the renegade warrior.

In Entertainment Weekly’s cover story of the prequel, Miller confirmed he was working on a prequel story about Hardy’s Max Rockatansky, sharing that he had already outlined Furiosa and Max’s backstories before Fury Road began production to help the cast better understand their characters.

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“We also wrote what happened to Max in the year before we encounter him in [that film],” Miller said. “And as we get towards the end of [Furiosa], the chronology, basically, we had to see that Mad Max was lurking around somewhere because we do know what happened. The writers know what happened to Mad Max in that year before, and we have a whole story of that, which I would like to do sometime if I get the chance.”

“We are certainly working on it,” Miller said when pressed further. “And as I say, we wrote that basically as a novella, and now we’ve got a chance, we will get that into a screenplay form, and then we’ll take it from there.”

Considering its prequel status, it’s indeed unlikely Hardy would reprise his role should the project reach fruition.

Miller’s Fury Road is part of a long line of adaptations, beginning with the 1979 film starring Mel Gibson in the title role. He would go on to reprise the role in two more sequels: 1981’s Mad Max 2 and 1985’s Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome. Furiosa, which arrived in theaters last month, opened with $59 million at the global box office, grossing $160 million so far worldwide.