Filming begins on Mad Max: Fury Road as first set pics emerge

George Miller's return to the dystopian world of Mad Max has certainly been a long time coming. A script for the long-awaited fourth installment, Mad Max: Fury Road, was completed back in 2003, with Miller aiming to reunite with original star Mel Gibson once again on the franchise they launched back in 1979, only for the project to hit delay after delay. After delay.

In 2009, Tom Hardy (The Dark Knight Rises) signed on to replace Gibson in the lead role as the leather-clad ex-cop with a view to shooting the sequel in Australia in 2011, only for heavy rainfail to leave the desert location covered with wildflowers, scuppering Miller's plans for a post-apocalyptic landscape.

For a time, it seemed that Fury Road would find itself stuck in development hell, but filming has finally kicked off in Namibia this month, and the first set photos have popped up online to prove it:



Nothing too revealing, but at least it's happening at long last...

Described as a 're-imagining' of the Mad Max universe, Fury Road sees Hardy joined in the cast by a shaven-headed Charlize Theron (Prometheus), Rosie Huntington-Whiteley (Transformers: Dark of the Moon), Riley Keough (Magic Mike), Adelaide Clemens (X-Men: Origins: Wolverine) and X-Men First Class pair Nicholas Hoult and Zoe Kravitz. The film is expected to hit cinemas some time next year... unless anything else goes wrong, that is.