I think Fury barely made it, with a cost of up to $180 million and earning around $380 million; that is, following Hollywood accounting, you add $100-200 million for marketing and then cut the revenues by 30-50 percent to cover the cut for theater owners and distributors.
That's why tent-poles need to earn at least 2.5 times their production cost, and investors are obviously never happy with break-even.
Meanwhile, one article reported that the franchise itself was not that profitable from the beginning, and likely because it's for a niche audience.
That said, I think the producers tried to buck that trend and reboot the franchise, and for a global audience that likely never heard of the first three movies, featuring A-listers and a lot of spectacle, and it still didn't do that well, especially for a film that essentially retold the first movie briefly and then rehashed the chase scene from the second movie and Bartertown from the third.
Observers note that Fury Road aside, the male-fueled Mad Max series has always catered to a somewhat niche audience. The first three films, starring Mel Gibson, grossed less than $70 million combined domestically.
“IP like Mad Max and Ghostbusters is old, and they have the fans they’re going to have,” says one theater chain executive. “If studios can budget to that, they might make some decent money.”
There was a video game, though:
Some also say that franchises like Fallout were partly inspired by this one.
In this case, what happened is that there were three movies, with the third one supposedly ending Max's story, and thus the franchise. After that, Miller wanted a fourth film, involving another "continuous chase scene," and still featuring Gibson but another character, to be played by Sigourney Weaver. (Side note: I think both are fonder of non-action genres, with Gibson coming from Shakespearean theater, and Weaver from Broadway, but are known more for sci-fi/action films). Coupled with that was a series of comic books featuring Max trying to make a new Interceptor, Furiosa and the Wives, Nux's story, another War Rig, and so on.
They probably figured that most who would be watching Fury had never seen the first three movies, which might explain praise for it even as many don't know that it essentially retells the first movie, borrows a combination of the Bartertown and and the oil well from the third and second movies, respectively (this time, replacing Auntie with Immortan, the "precious juice" with water, and the Tribe with the Wives), and then borrows the chase scene from the second movie using another Rig.
I think the plan after that was to retell Furiosa's story (reminds me of the Feral Kid from the second movie), and then do a prequel about Max, probably set between the first movie (where there's no wasteland, yet) and Max wandering in the wasteland (the second film).
With that, they should have probably focused on cheaper production, probably using more virtual sets (like Mandalorian), and maybe even towards streaming (like Prey) or a mini-series. The catch is that they'd need to find new actors with the potential for breakthrough performances, as getting A-listers would be too expensive. Given that plus the need to create more content, they'd also have to come up with much better writing, and probably similar to the content of the first three movies.
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