With this year’s Furiosa receding into the rearview mirror, fans can now stream the movie that kicked off the whole saga. Mad Max will stream (appropriately enough) on Max next month. The apocalyptic 1979 thriller will be available on the streamer starting on January 1, 2025.
Medical doctor and amateur filmmaker George Miller made his future directorial debut with Mad Max; inspired by car accident injuries he’d seen in the emergency room and a recent oil crisis, he conceived of a near-future Australia where madmen roamed the roads of the Outback. A then-unknown Mel Gibson was cast in the lead, and many actual motorcyclists were recruited to play the villainous bikers of the film. It featured a number of death-defying and dangerous automotive stunts, which would become a hallmark of the Mad Max films; however, the production did not have a single accident during production. The film, made on a budget of $400,000 USD, was an enormous success, making $100 million at the global box office; it was the most-profitable movie of all time for nearly two decades before it was dethroned by The Blair Witch Project.
What Is ‘Mad Max’ About?
With civilization beginning to fray, Australian highway policeman Max Rockatansky (Gibson) tries to preserve some order, even as sadistic motorcycle gangs begin to rule the roads. Leading them is the brutal Toecutter (Hugh Keays-Byrne, who would star as Immortan Joe decades later in Mad Max: Fury Road). After his partner Goose (Steve Bisley) is horribly injured in an encounter with Toecutter’s gang, Max takes a vacation with his wife Jessie (Joanne Samuel) and their young son to escape from the slow collapse of society. But he soon finds that there’s no escape from man’s inhumanity to man when Toecutter’s gang shatters his family. With nothing left to lose, he lives up to his nickname – Mad Max – as he takes out Toecutter’s gang one by one.
With Mad Max a global success, Miller directed a sequel, Mad Max 2: The Road Warrior, which featured a world completely in ruins and even more outlandish car stunts. Another sequel, Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome, followed in 1985; Miller would return to the Mad Max milieu decades later with Fury Road and the prequel Furiosa. Mad Max’s success also kicked off a massive wave of post-apocalyptic imitators and ripoffs.
Mad Max will stream on Max starting January 1, 2025. Stay tuned to Collider for future updates.
Mad Max
In a not-too-distant dystopian future, when man’s most precious resource — oil — has been depleted and the world plunged into war, famine and financial chaos, the last vestiges of the law in Australia attempt to restrain a vicious biker gang. Max (Mel Gibson), an officer with the Main Force Patrol, launches a personal vendetta against the gang when his wife (Joanne Samuel) and son are hunted down and murdered, leaving him with nothing but the instincts for survival and retribution.
- Release Date
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March 21, 1980
- Director
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George Miller
- Runtime
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88 Minutes
- Writers
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George Miller
, James McCausland
, Byron Kennedy - Budget
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$233–266 Million
- Studio(s)
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Kennedy Miller Entertainment
- Distributor(s)
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Roadshow Film Distributors
- Franchise(s)
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Mad Max