The saga of director George Miller's black and white version of the excellent Mad Max: Fury Road has been a long one. Miller has long talked about how the black, white and no soundtrack version of the film is his "true" vision for Fury Road, and sought to include the alternate version on the Mad Max: Fury Road Blu-ray release.
As fans know, that didn't come to pass. For reasons still unknown, the black and white version of the movie didn't appear on the home release. A fan-edit of the movie inspired by Miller's words scratched the itch for a while (before it got taken down), but things weren't looking good for fans who longed to see Miller's original vision.
But hope might not be entirely lost. According to a new interview with Miller and producer Doug Mitchell, the black and white cut of Mad Max: Fury Road is not only alive and well, but it might just be released in theaters next year.
Via Screen Daily:
In 2016, there might also be a black-and-white version of the film, which Miller confirms was his original intent. A greyscale and silent version was leaked online in September, although it has since been removed. Mitchell says that an official version exists and could yet receive a theatrical release.
That's exciting news for fans who can't get enough of the two hour long chase film, though some may still find Miller insistence on the black and white version being superior a little confusing. Fury Road was praised for its visual storytelling, featuring a color palette unlike anything we've seen before in a post- apocalyptic film. That Miller wants to stripe all of that away, along with the film's impressive soundtrack, sounds crazy, but it's exactly what he wants. Here's what he said in a Q&A with fellow director Edgar Wright earlier this year:
"One thing I've noticed is that the default position for everyone is to de-saturate post-apocalyptic movies. There's only two ways to go, make them black and white - the best version of this movie is black and white, but people reserve that for art movies now. The other version is to really go all-out on the color. The usual teal and orange thing? That's all the colors we had to work with. The desert's orange and the sky is teal, and we either could de-saturate it, or crank it up, to differentiate the movie. Plus, it can get really tiring watching this dull, de-saturated color, unless you go all the way out and make it black and white."
Will Warner Bros. grant Miller's wish and release the black and white cut of the film? The film studio is no doubt pleasantly surprised by Fury Road's success, which might make them willing to re-release this new version of the film for a limited time. We'll just have to wait and see.
