Mad Max 4 - the new trailer you need to see (+video)

It's been more than three decades since Australian filmmaker George Miller crashed on to the world stage with post-Apocalyptic thriller Mad Max, starring a then unknown Mel Gibson.

Now 35-years later he's back with his fourth installment in the franchise, and the 69-year-old said he 'couldn't believe' he was still making movies within the Mad Max universe.

The Sydney-based writer, director and producer stepped out at San Diego Comic Con on Saturday to talk about Fury Road, starring Charlize Theron and Tom Hardy, who takes over the title role of Max.

"I was able to make the movie I wanted to make," he told thousands of fans who had packed out one of the convention's largest halls to hear him speak.

If there was any doubt in Miller's mind that people would still be interested in his world of desert chases and spiked cars, that was gone as a standing-room only crowd devoured his details on the making of the film, which was shot in Australia and Africa.

Miller said he made a concious choice not to do the "conventional thing" with the screenplay and instead recreated it much like a comic book.

"We boarded whole thing like a comic book, with 3500 panels," he said, with the art drawn by Mark Sexton and shared later that day on Twitter.

"There aren't many words, people only speak when they have to and I wanted to tell the story in pictures."

Miller said the fourth film was tonally most similar to the second - Mad Max: Road Warrior - and that 36-year-old Hardy made a "quality" Max.

"It's like watching a big wild animal, you don't know what they're going to do next," he said of The Dark Knight Rises star.

"I think that paradox is one element of charisma. I've been lucky to work with some wonderful actors."

Fans were given a taste of the film's look when Miller debuted four new posters for Fury Road - which is set for release on May 15, 2015.

As well as Hardy and Theron, the cast is filled out by Nicholas Hoult, Rosie Huntington-Whiteley, Zoë Kravitz and Australian actor Hugh Keyes Burns who played Toecutter in Mad Max 2.

- Daily Mail