Entertainment Weekly has released the first images of Mad Max: Fury Road, the new film in the Mad Max series starring Tom Hardy as famous road warrior Max Rockatansky and Charlize Theron as the robotic limbed commander Imperator Furiosa.

The film is based on a 2003 idea from George Miller, the writer and director of all previous Mad Max movies, who is back for to direct the sequel/spinoff. He also wrote the screenplay for the film with Brendan McCarthy and Nico Lathouris.

The film didn’t begin shooting, however, until 2012. When the filming finally did start, the cast and crew spent a seven months in the desert of Namibia. “It was mental in a brilliant way,” Hardy told Entertainment Weekly. “You have no concrete, no coffee shops. We were in the middle of a sandpit.”

“I wanted to tell a linear story — a chase that starts as the movie begins and continues for 110 minutes,” said Miller to Entertainment Weekly. “In this crucible of very intense action, the characters are revealed.”

As MTV News notes, the film features few digital effects and dialogue.

The film also stars, as noted by Comingsoon.net, Nicholas Hoult, Hugh Keays-Byrne, Nathan Jones, Zoe Kravitz, Riley Keough, Rosie Huntington-Whiteley, and many more, and is set to hit theaters on May 15, 2015.

The images from EW can be found here.

Photo Credit: INFphoto.com