When I read, over at io9, that George Miller might be thinking of finally starting work on MAD MAX IV, but as a 3D animated film, I had to ask Brendan McCarthy for his perspective. "Mad Max 4 Fury Road as a possible animated cgi feature, was mooted many years ago, when Mel Gibson was involved and I was still working on the movie. I think it could be good; think of the opening first third of WAll-E's blighted urban landscape. But the FURY ROAD screenplay I co-wrote with George Miller would need to be revised to take advantage of the different medium of cgi mo-cap animation. Maybe it will go in a totally new direction. I haven't had anything to do with any of this for over 5 years, so things may well have changed quite a lot. Either way, I'll be in the line to see it in 3D!" So that's from the horse's mouth: McCarthy is not currently closely involved with this (still delicious sounding) movie. Though I hope when Miller does start working on it, that the final product bears plenty of Brendan's influence, visually or otherwise.
While I was bending his ear, and remembering how funny he's been on the subject of Dr. Manhattan in the past, ("My initial pitch was for a humorous story featuring Dr. Manhattan's massive blue penis and balls from The Watchmen... I liked that when he became a giant, his privates also grew enormously huge. I could imagine being inside a tall apartment block and being astonished as a giant blue monster sausage swayed by outside the window... Of course I wondered if it would now be OK to view The Martian Manhunter's green J'onn Thomas, for example... But this was a case of only highbrow 'arthouse' nudity being allowed ("Glenda Jackson's tits syndrome") and it was rejected straight away") I asked Brendan if he'd seen WATCHMEN yet: "For me, Watchmen didn't really work. The film was too self-consciously reverential and should have been 'based on' The Watchmen comics, and taken many more liberties. It really is an example of the comic book being better than the film. So Dave and Alan's original is still the definitive version and likely to remain so. I think V For Vendetta remains the best attempt at his work so far."
That's a few people I've heard now praising the V movie in the last few days. Must watch it. My personal attachment to V FOR VENDETTA (stronger than my attachment to Watchmen, thanks to my young self's love of WARRIOR) has meant that I've shied away from it to now.