George Miller Says 'Interstellar' Came Close To What His Version Of 'Contact' Would've Been Like

One long week separates the world from the cataclysmic glory of “Mad Max: Fury Road.” In light of the film coming thirty years after “Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome” —not to mention an entire generation of filmgoers born in between— Warner Bros. is wheeling out George Miller like he's going out of style. Though it’s nearly become a cliché to note that the same man responsible for Lord Humungus and Master Blaster is also behind four movies concerned with talking animals, a new interview with Collider has reminded that the Australian director’s filmography could have been even more eclectic.

Since before the novel was published in 1985, Carl Sagan’s “Contact” was destined to end up on the big screen when one of his closest friends, producer Lynda Obst, became a studio exec and pitched the movie to the production company she worked for, Peter Guber’s Casablanca FilmWorks. It took nearly two decades for the film to come to fruition under...