Australian film director, screenwriter, and producer George Miller is well-known. He first developed an interest in movies while attending Sydney’s University of Medicine. He created a one-minute video in his last year, won first place, and received free admission to a Melbourne film workshop. Even after receiving his MBBS, he kept an interest in filmmaking. His first movie, “Mad Max,” was a great blockbuster and established his reputation as a director despite having a very small budget. It received three Australian Academy of Cinema and Television Arts Awards and a Special Jury Award at the Avoriaz Fantastic Film Festival. After that, he produced three additional Mad Max movies, which had even greater popularity. He won an Academy Award for an animated musical called “Happy Feet,” despite the fact that he is currently most recognized for his “Mad Max” trilogy.
Young Adulthood & Childhood
George Miller was born on March 3, 1945, into a Greek immigrant family in Queensland, Australia. The precise location of his birth is under question. Some claim that he was born in Brisbane, while others refer to Chinchilla, where he spent his early years.
The family-owned a mill on the Greek island of Kythira, where his father, Dimitri Castrisios Miliotis, was originally from. He adopted the surname Miller upon arriving in Australia, eventually opening a general shop and café in Chinchilla.
His mother, Angela nee Balloyoulo, is employed in the shop with her husband. Her family was uprooted during the 1923 population exchange; they were originally from Anatolia. They anglicized their last name to Balson when they immigrated to Australia.
All four of the couple’s children were boys. The first of them to be born was George, followed by his fraternal (non-identical) twin John. Bill and Chris, his younger brothers, are his siblings. Bill, incidentally, went on to become a distinguished film producer.
He spent his entire youth playing with friends and exploring the bush at his leisure, never telling his parents where he was. He had a really happy upbringing. He also enjoyed watching movies at the Star Theatre and listening to the radio, trying to apply what he observed to their games.
At the age of seven, he experienced death for the first time. They made the decision to swim in the neighboring river one day while out riding with three pals. He observed one of his friends vanishing under the surface as he swam across the river.
Rushing back to aid him, he ended himself drowning beside him. Even though a passing cowboy intervened just in time to save them, the experience of being so close to death haunted him for days and had a significant impact on his filmmaking.
He also liked taking drives when he was younger. He enjoyed gazing out the window while riding in the backseat of their family automobile, either at the far-off horizon or the endlessly long, flat roads with their white lines.
Although the exact location is unknown, it is clear that George started his formal education at Chinchilla. George and John were later enrolled as boarders at Ipswich Grammar School, which is situated in Ipswich near Brisbane, when they were eleven years old. George had nightmares every night and did not enjoy his time there.
He had a frequent dreams in which a man was riding across a desolate area when the terrain started to shift and eventually swallowed the man up. He could never get over how much it used to scare him.
The Millers liquidated their business and relocated to Sydney’s Vaucluse not long after the twins were taken to Ipswich. The lads were then enrolled in Sydney Boys High School when they turned twelve.
George and John entered the University of New South Wales Faculty of Medicine to pursue their MBBS degrees after finishing high school in the late 1960s. Here, George showed a particular interest in human physiology.
Career of George Miller
When they were in their final year of college, in 1971, George and John produced and directed a one-minute movie. They won the top honor in a nearby competition, which allowed George to sign up for a free summer film school session at the University of Melbourne.
George and Byron Kennedy became longtime friends after meeting at a Melbourne film workshop. George also wrote and directed his debut movie, “Violence in Cinema Part I,” in 1971. It was produced by Byron and placed in the documentary section of the 1972 Sydney Film Festival where it received favorable reviews.
Miller worked as the resident medical officer at St. Vincent’s Hospital for a year after getting his MBBS in 1971. After that, he worked for two and a half years at a municipal hospital and kept his medical board registration up until 1981. He continued to produce small experimental films at the same time.
Together with Byron Kennedy, George Miller cofounded “Kennedy Miller Production” in 1978. Their first movie, “Mad Max,” was released in 1979, and Miller used his medical salary to cover the postproduction costs. Miller co-wrote and directed the movie, which became an immediate success, earning $5,355,490 in Australia and more than $100 million globally.
He was the producer of Ian Barry’s disaster/science fiction thriller “The Chain Reaction” from 1980. Miller oversaw the film’s vehicle chase scene (un-credited). He received numerous offers from Hollywood around this time, but he decided to work on the rock and roll film “Roxanne.”
He never finished “Roxanne” for some reason, permanently shelving the project. Instead, he made the decision to create “Mad Max” II. He hoped to produce a better movie with a larger budget. It was eventually published in 1981 under the titles “Mad Max 2” in Australia and “The Road Warrior” in the USA.
The Twilight Zone: The Movie, a recreation of the 1959–1964 television series “The Twilight Zone,” was his subsequent motion picture. The picture, which was first seen on June 24, 1983, sparked controversy when three performers, including two children who had been hired in contravention of Californian law, died in a stunt helicopter crash.
Miller wrote, directed, and produced the miniseries “Dismissal” for Australian television in 1983. Two further miniseries, “Last Bastion” (directed) and “Bodyline” (written and produced), which were both broadcasts in 1984, came after it. He would produce a second miniseries in 1989 titled “Bangkok Hilton.”
George Miller released a second Mad Max sequel in 1985. He co-wrote and directed the movie, which was titled “Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome.” Despite a larger budget, the film’s domestic box office take of $4,272,802 was quite moderate. Despite the majority of the reviews being favorable, many fans condemned it for being “Hollywoodized.”
Following “Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome” (also known as “Mad Max 3”), Miller took a hiatus from making action movies and instead focused on directing the comedy-fantasy movie “The Witches of Eastwick,” which was based on the same-titled novel by John Updike. It received positive reviews upon release on June 12, 1987, and did well financially.
He took a sabbatical from directing between 1987 and 1991 and produced a variety of movies, including “The Year My Voice Broke” in 1987, “Dead Calm” in 1989, and “Flirting” in 1991.
He began work on “Lorenzo’s Oil,” a drama movie that he co-wrote with Nick Enright, directed, and produced, in September 1991. Lorenzo’s Oil was well welcomed upon release on December 30, 1992. His first Academy Award nomination for script writing came from the movie, which was based on Augusto and Michaela Odone’s tenacious quest to find a treatment for their son’s adrenoleukodystrophy.
Warner Brothers selected George Miller as the director of “Contact” in 1993. He worked on it for about a year before agreeing to part ways for subsequent reasons that are still unknown.
The script for “Babe,” a sheep who desired to become a sheepdog, was co-written by him after that. The movie, which was released in the USA on August 4, 1995, was also produced by him. He made the documentary “Video Fool for Love” the following year.
He also directed and starred in the one-hour documentary “40,000 Years of Dreaming (White Fellas Dreaming: A Century of Australian Cinema),” which he authored the script for. He created a collage using images from several Australian films, including his own Mad Max series.
He co-wrote, directed, and produced the 1998 follow-up to his 1995 film “Babe.” ‘Babe: Pig in the City’ is the title.
After “Babe: Pig in the City,” he took a break. Happy Feet, his subsequent motion picture, was released on November 17 in North America and December 26 in Australia. Miller directed, co-wrote, and co-produced this movie, which he also co-produced and for which he received his lone Academy Award.
Despite being mostly a computer-animated musical picture about a penguin’s existence in Antarctica, “Happy Feet” included live human action in a few parts. It’s interesting to note that he was first motivated to create such a movie after meeting the son of explorer Frank Harley while filming Mad Max 2.
Miller was hired in 2007 to helm “Justice League Mortal,” but sadly the project was scrapped. In collaboration with Omnilab Media in Sydney, his business, Kennedy Miller, established the D. D. Studio digital animation studio that same year. Kennedy Miller was then renamed Kennedy Miller Michel in 2009.
After “Happy Feet” became a commercial hit, Miller began developing its sequel. The movie, titled “Happy Feet Two,” which cost $135 million to produce, was released in the USA and Australia in late 2011. Unfortunately, it fell short of expectations.
He made a comeback to action movies in 2015 with “Mad Max Fury Road.” Pre-production for the movie had begun as early as 1997, but for a variety of reasons, it was put in a state of “development limbo.” In July 2012, he finally began filming it.
Mad Max Fury Road, which received multiple nominations and awards, was released in May 2015. After that, he began developing its successor, “Mad Max Wasteland.” Unfortunately, a lawsuit brought against Warner Brothers regarding a $7 million bonus that was in question caused a delay in production, and it has not yet been released.
Bigger Works of George Miller
The “Mad Max” movies by George Miller, which follow the exploits of Max Rockatansky, a police officer in a dystopian Australia, are his best-known works. Mad Max (1979), Mad Max 2 (1981), Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome (1985), and Mad Max: Fury Road was the first films in the franchise (2015).
Personal Legacy & Life
Actress Sandy Gore and George Miller had a daughter together in 1985 who was named Augusta. They split up in 1992.
He married Margaret Sixel, a film editor, in 1995 after meeting her while working on the movie “Flirting.” Buda Miller and Tige Miller, the couple’s two boys, were born in 1996 and 2006, respectively.
George Miller’s Net Worth
Australian director, writer, and producer George Miller has an estimated net worth of $18 million. George Miller, who was born in Brisbane, Queensland, Australia, in 1945, attended medical school and created his first short film while pursuing a career in medicine. After winning a competition with a short film he and his brother produced, Miller signed up for a workshop at Melbourne University. Miller’s development of the Mad Max franchise is arguably his most well-known contribution. Mad Max, Mad Max 2, Mad Max Beyond the Thunderdome, and the upcoming Mad Max: Fury Road were all written and directed by him. Among Miller’s other writing and directing credits are “Babe,” “Lorenzo’s Oil,” “The Witches of Eastwick,” “The Cowra Breakout,” “Vietnam,” and the hugely popular animated movie “Happy Feet.” Miller has been nominated for many Oscars, including Best Picture for “Babe,” Best Screenplay Based on Material Already Published for “Babe,” and Best Screenplay Written Directly for the Screen for “Lorenzo’s Oil.” For “Happy Feet,” which also won the Best Animated Feature BAFTA Award in 2007, he received the 2007 Academy Award for Best Animated Feature. In 1973, Miller and his friend, the late Byron Kennedy, established the Australian production business Kennedy Miller Mitchell.
Trivia
George Miller maintained his registration with the medical board until 1981, despite the popularity of “Mad Max.” This is mostly due to the fact that in order to do stunts, a doctor had to be present on the set, and by maintaining his registration, he was allowed to do so.