At a recent premiere event for Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga, acclaimed director and creator of the Mad Max franchise George Miller was asked who he’d want to spearhead production on a potential video game set in his universe. He immediately pointed at one of the most iconic minds in modern game direction: Hideo Kojima.
Miller mentioned how he spoke with Kojima at the event and how he had flown in from Japan to see the movie.
Kojima, an avid cinephile who often posts film reviews and updates on social media, had nothing but high praise for Furiosa, saying that “[George Miller] is my God, and the saga that he tells is my Bible,” in a post on X (formerly Twitter) after seeing the film. According to an interview with Rotten Tomatoes, Kojima saw Fury Road in theaters 17 times.
After the release of Mad Max: Fury Road in 2015, the franchise received a jolt of life, and Warner Bros. made an effort to capitalize off that rejuvenation of interest in Mad Max by creating a new video game. But Miller admittedly wasn’t all that impressed with how it turned out.
“We did have a video game when we made Fury Road … and it wasn’t as good as I wanted it to be,” Miller told LADbible on the red carpet at the Furiosa premiere. “It wasn’t in our hands. We gave all our material to a company to do it. But you know, I’m one of those people who would rather not do something unless you can do it at the highest level or at least try to make it at the highest level.”
The 2015 Mad Max game, developed by Avalanche Studios (Just Cause) and published by Warner Bros., received mixed reviews, at best. But if Miller and the Mad Max team went back into the video game foray, they’d want to get it right and make it as cinematic as possible with Kojima, a notably cinematic game director, leading the efforts.
Kojima currently has a lot on his plate (he’s always got a new project in the works), and Miller definitely acknowledged “so much fantastic stuff in his own head” that he wouldn’t want to distract the visionary game director from. Currently, one of Kojima’s next games, OD, a collaborative effort with Oscar-winner Jordan Peele, is in production.
“I would never ask him, but if there’s someone like that who would take it on, because I couldn’t do it,” Miller said of Kojima.
Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga, starring Anya Taylor-Joy as the titular character, was released in theaters today.
