It’s been nearly a year since we learned that Tom Hardy would take a walk with returning director George Miller to the world of Mad Max, specifically Hardy and Miller will be skipping down Fury Road.

Swift casting followed. Nicholas Hoult, so impressive in A Single Man, and so woefully underused in Clash of the Titans joined the film, and Riley Keough jumped on board to join Hardy and the film’s female lead, Charlize Theron.

Little is known about the role Theron will play in the film, so any kind of detail is of interest and there’s a new report from MovieHole who picked up a quote from the ABC website, concerning Annabelle Williams, an Australian Paralympic medal winner, who has been cast as a stunt double in Miller’s film.

Here’s what ABC Sport had to say,

“I got a phone call from one of the people at [the production company] and they said it’s got a $200 million budget. My mum was sitting there and we were just like ‘What?’”

“Then they said that the lead actress was Charlize Theron and I nearly died.

“And then I thought to myself the resemblance (between Theron and myself) is striking.

She laughed, adding: “Not at all. And she’s about a foot taller than me.”

In the film, Theron’s character will have part of one arm missing. Williams will fill in for the Academy Award-winner during a fight scene.

“They are going to film me from a very long distance for the fighting so that they don’t have to CGI out her arm.

“I will be her, but just not [in] the face.

So, Theron is an amputee who gets into a few scrapes along the (fury) road. There’s still no update to the potential back-to-back filming of this film and a sequel but with filming due to start soon it’ll take a trailer, rather than piecemeal news items to get people really interested.

You may have seen our post last week of Mad Max lead man Tom Hardy talking about George Miller’s return to Fury Road, scheduled to start filming later this year?

Well, there’s a story going around tonight that director George Miller is making two Mad Max films back to back and looking back on Hardy’s answers this rumour could have legs.

Among talk of his training and his version of the Mad Max character Hardy dropped a few hints,

We’re shooting for a year…

the he clarified,

[We're] shooting for probably nine months. The training period is allocated as two months, technically. We don’t know whether it’s going to push a little bit or come up a little bit, we’re in sort of a gray area. There’s various anomalies and shifting papers. All kinds of people’s schedules, from what I’m aware, need to be tied down.

For more of this talk do check out Alex Billington’s write up here.

The first thing that pops out is the whole nine months shooting – maybe Hardy included the training schedule in here, but it’s hard to say. The story claims that the second movie will have the name Furiosa, which sounds unlikely to inspire the masses but who knows?

Nine months does seem like a long time to shoot for, and Twitch have their sources and two Mad Max films shot together could account for Hardy’s words, but clarification will be sought.

Maybe the extra time will leave space in Mel Gibson’s schedule for a cameo? Maybe not.

There are several young actors stepping in to the spotlight at the moment whose screen presence and raw potential are exhilarating to see; British actor Tom Hardy is soon to be seen in one of the year’s biggest films with a role in Christopher Nolan’s Inception and was recently cast as the lead in George Miller’s revisiting of Mad Max.

Our good friend Alex Billington from FirstShowing sat down to talk with Hardy about Inception but found the actor open to discussing what he could about Mad Max: Fury Road. Of particular interest were the words Hardy used to describe Miller’s take on this revisiting of the world of Mad Max,

It’s a relaunch and revisit to the world, an entire restructuring. That’s not to say that it’s not picking up or leaving off from the Mad Max you know already, but it’s a nice re-take on the entire world using the same character, depositing him in the same world, but bringing him up to date by 30 years.

And this quote from Hardy,

Obviously Mel would’ve been perfect for it but, for some reason, he’s not doing it and I am.

echoes an interview he gave to MTV at the end of last year, before he had been officially cast,

The Mad Max figure is a big figure, and I have to get my head around that. I would have to pick up where Mel left off, but in all honesty, it would be ridiculous to pick up where Mel left off. He is Mad Max.

If you’re interested in Tom Hardy as an actor, or Mad Max as a franchise you have to check out Alex’s write up of the conversation here, there’s much more to read and Hardy goes into detail about the shoot, the proposed scale and how the inevitable CG fits into the wasted world. Hardy is one of the most interesting actors working today and seems up for stepping into Mel Gibson’s shoes and making the role his own.

The star of About a Boy and Channel 4′s Skins Nicholas Hoult has been cast in George Miller’s Mad Max 4: Fury Road. Currently impressing with Colin Firth in A Single Man, Hoult will star alongside Charlize Theron and Tom Hardy as a character known as Nux, and that’s as much as Heat Vision, who reported the story, can tell us.

By sheer coincidence I saw A Single Man last night and was very impressed with Hoult though he was very boyish, and rightly so. How this will play once the world has gone to Hell in a Thunderdome is unclear, but Hoult is making his name with brio.

In a Q&A for Edge of Darkness, Mel Gibson elaborated on a few of his forthcoming projects and the fourth Mad Max film, and Collider has bought us this to chew on.

With George Miller taking on the reins of directing Fury Road, or Mad Max 4 to the rest of us, the first port of call following the years of development the film has stewed in was to assemble a stellar cast. Tom Hardy, recently so impressive in Bronson, is signed on to take the lead alongside Charlize Theron but what devoted fans (Maxims?) want to know is has Mel Gibson signed on to play his part?

At one point I was involved and it fell to bits and then this and that…so now it’s probably gone through a lot of changes and I can’t wait to see it.

It would be something to see Gibson return to that world, and with most of the revisiting franchises, Ghostbusters 3 and The A-Team being prime examples, the iconic stars of the source material are mostly returning in one form or another.

Collider also bought us news of Gibson’s Viking movie, set to star Leonardo DiCaprio. There’s no surprise that he wants to go all out and make this film as realistic as possible.

I think it’s going to be English – the English that would have been spoken back then – and Old Norse.  Whatever the 9th century had to offer.  I’m going to give you real.

I want a Viking to scare you…I want to see somebody who I have never seen before speaking low guterl German who scares the living shit out of me coming up to my house.  What is that like?

So, expect scary Germans and Old Norse. Oh, and Leonardo DiCaprio. Sounds like fun.

George Miller is sending a rejuvenating ten thousand volts into the Mad Max franchise and the result will be Mad Max 4 and THR is reporting that Miller has found his new leading man – Tom Hardy.

After his impressive turn in Bronson it seems Hardy will take on the post apocalyptic road warriors in the fourth film of the Mad Max series, and rumours abound that Charlize Theron is in talks to play the female lead.

Interesting casting certainly, and I’ve no doubt that Hardy can kick all sorts of arse and deserves to be given a role that will introduce him to a wider audience. Miller will be shooting Mad Max 4 next year. Eyes, as always, will be on this one.

Now if they could get Tina Turner back involved somehow that would be great.

Check out the THR Heat Vision piece here.