Fury Road Broken Hill, one of the locations that George Miller plans to use for the latest Max Max movie. Filming has been posponed until 2012.
The Age reports
George Miller puts his right hand into a pocket in his black pin-striped suit jacket and fumbles around for a moment before eventually pulling out a shiny new iPhone."I just bought this and I'm still trying to work out how to use it," the Queensland-born, Sydney-based Oscar-winning director and former casualty ward doctor chuckles during an interview in a Beverly Hills hotel.
Miller, 66, manages to click on the camera option on the smartphone and flicks through the videos he has stored away until he finds the one he is searching for.
"I'll show you something. This is Broken Hill," he says, holding the iPhone up to reveal video he took of the once scorched, bone-dry, red-earthed outback outside of the mining town in far west NSW.
You can hear Miller chatting away on the video as he comments on the kilometres of lush, beautiful flowers swaying in a slight wind. It is a stunning sight and could be mistaken for one of Claude Monet's rich, vibrant garden paintings.
"It is amazing. Isn't it?" Miller says.
The desert beauty of the lush outback, however, could cost Australia tens of millions of dollars in film production and hundreds of jobs.
Miller had planned to bring South African beauty Charlize Theron and Britain's new acting prince, Tom Hardy, to Broken Hill to film the fourth chapter in his Mad Max film series, to be titled Mad Max: Fury Road, but just like the previous three Mad Max films the story is set in a desert wasteland.
Thanks to rain in the region, Broken Hill in its present state is perfect for a romantic drama, not the fourth chapter of Mad Max.
Miller confirms Mad Max: Fury Road could be shot in the south-west African nation of Namibia, although a final decision has not been made, leaving open to the possibility the production could remain in Australia.
He wants it to be in his homeland and NSW politicians are scrambling to keep it in their state.
Theron, the blonde beauty and 2004 best actress Oscar winner, would also like Mad Max: Fury Road to be filmed in Australia, despite Namibia being a short flight from her home town in South Africa.
"I would love it. I love Australia," Theron confirmed in an interview last week to promote her new drama, Young Adult, a role that will likely score her another Oscar nomination.
She also concedes the production is likely headed to Namibia.
"Yeah it looks like Namibia. That's the latest," Theron says.
Miller, a giant in Australia's film and TV industry with films Babe, The Year My Voice Broke and Dead Calm and the TV mini-series Cowra Breakout and The Dismissal among his credits, is aware Australians will be disappointed if Fury Road departs to Africa.
"Yeah, it's such a pity, but I hope everyone understands," Miller says.
A final decision will be made after he takes a breather from his latest film, Happy Feet 2, a follow-up to his Oscar-winning animated film about singing and dancing penguins in Antarctica.
"To be honest, I'm not thinking much about it (Fury Road). I have just finished Happy Feet 2," Miller says.
"The last seven months we have worked seven days a week, almost 100 hour weeks."
When it is suggested Australia has plenty of other desert locations than Broken Hill, he explains Coober Pedy in South Australia, where the third in his series, Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome, was filmed was hazardous for the vehicles that are such a major part of any Mad Max film.
"If it was horses you could ride them off-road, but what they call the moon plains out there had that shard stone and it would just cut up the cars so you couldn't do stunts," Millers explains.
"It wasn't safe. It is very difficult."
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