Out on the **Inception **publicity junket, new Max Rockatansky Tom Hardy fed Collider a few choice morsels about **Mad Max: Fury Road, George Miller's late-coming extention of the dystopian rubber-burning franchise.
Shooting hasn't started yet, but Hardy revealed that through a smoking diet, he's dropped thirty pounds for the film. "I can't say when I'm going to be in front of the cameras," he says, "but I'm headed tonight to Australia to start some stunt-training and fight training. The harder stuff. Three or four months, seven days a week of all that horrible shit".
Hardy is mentally preparing himself for a gruelling nine-month shoot: a colossally long period which is apparently causing some headaches for the production: "All kinds of people's shifting schedules need to be tied down". Theresa Palmer is already out (although she's claiming she was never involved at all).
Hence the uncertain start date, but what does seem decided is the "look" of the new Max. "Imagine a hungry wolf," suggests Hardy, "or like when you put a cat in the bath. That's what I'm going to look like, but like a puma: very hungry and dangerous. This is a guy who's not well, so it's imperative that I create that reality."
Anyone who's seen Hardy's terrifying turn in Bronson won't be questioning his commitment to "that reality". We still don't quite know which direction the Fury Road leads in, but Hardy says it has "the same amount of grit and rawness and authenticity" as before. "Big rigs, big explosions, big crashes, big violence. It's a relaunch and revisit and entire restructuring, which isn't to say it's not picking up from the Mad Max you know already. It's a nice retake on the character: depositing him in the same world but bringing him up to date by 30 years."