Mad Max is currently drawing accolades in the film industry, despite relatively disappointing earnings in the box office. The vehicle-centric apocalyptic series has an upcoming tie-in game scheduled for release later this year, developed by none other than Avalanche Studios. Fans of Mad Max can undoubtedly be excited that the studio behind the Just Cause series is hard at work on the intellectual property, especially considering how poorly movie tie-in games have done when not backed by a Triple A game developer.
As it turns out, Avalanche Studios weren't the initial choice for the Mad Max videogame – instead, the developer of the original Fallout games was initially put to the task. The founder of Interplay, Brian Fargo, detailed how the director of Mad Max had been a fan of Interplay's Fallout series, and wanted Fargo to create a game that came from a similar vein. Interplay's spin on the Mad Max universe was set to be a party-based roleplaying game, which would contain a heavy focus on the intensive vehicular combat from the movies.
Fargo explained that he and director George Miller had been flown by Univeral on a private jet to Whistler, British Columbia, where they had discussed the potential videogame tie-in to the 2015 movie for hours. It became evident Miller was a large fan of the original Fallout games, and the two reportedly spent half the time 'fanboying' about the series, before talking about what Interplay could bring to the table for a Mad Max videogame.
Unfortunately, the initial faltering of the Mad Max franchise movie development caused problems with Interplay's creation of the game, and Universal eventually relinquished control of the film to other studios, which shifted in a direction away from Interplay:
"The movie had lots of fits and starts. The movie was at Fox for some of the time, it got announced and then it got canned. Then Warner Brothers ended up getting the rights, they had a relationship with Miller that goes way back."
As Mad Max fans likely know, Warner Bros. would go on to enlist Avalanche Studios to create a Mad Max game, who kept the title largely under wraps until a reveal at E3 2013. The game is now scheduled for a release in the fall of this year, and screenshots show a game that looks pretty gorgeous – perhaps vindicating Warner Brother's decision to go with a studio that wasn't going through the funding problems Interplay experienced.
Interplay managed to survive without both Mad Max and Fallout Online, though the once-top-tier company is now producing chess games released on Steam's early-access platform. After producing so many classic titles, we hope Fargo can garner a budget to create more blockbuster franchises at some point down the road.
Do you think Interplay could have delivered an entertaining Mad Max game, Ranters?
Mad Max is currently scheduled for a September 2015 release from Avalanche Studios. The game will release for Xbox One, PS4, PC and Linux.
Source: IGN
