Mad Max director George Miller has spoken for the first time about the opportunity he had to adapt Carl Sagan's novel Contact in the mid 90's. Robert Zemeckis was the filmmaker eventually entrusted with the story of faith and conflict, though Miller had the first bite at the cherry.

Mad MaxTom Hardy stars in George Miller's Mad Max: Fury Road

Miller worked on a screenplay with Sagan and Sagan's wife Ann Druyan before he parted ways with Warner Bros. Now, on the promotional trailer for the critically acclaimed Mad Max, the filmmaker admits he never saw Zemeckis's version though revealed he had a more challenging script than Warners was comfortable with.

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"No [I never saw it]; not any disrespect to Bob Zemeckis," he told Collider, "One of the peak moments of my life was to spend a year with Carl Sagan, because he and Ann Druyan wrote that screenplay, and it was just absolutely wonderful to meet those scientists and talk about the movie. But as time went on, it was clear that Warners weren't prepared to do the movie that I was interested in making. It was gonna be safer, so we agreed to part ways. Then somebody sent me the screenplay they were going to make, and it basically regressed into a much safer, more predictable thing."

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"Interstellar's much closer than [Zemeckis'] Contact. Not that I've seen Contact, but I have read the screenplay."

Though Zemeckis's version was considered a triumph, one can only assume - given the quality of Fury Road - that Miller's version would have been a sight to behold.