Tom Hardy has revealed he is "totally ready" to reprise the role of Mad Max in the next film in a planned trilogy.

The British actor said he was "looking forward" to a follow-up to Mad Max: Fury Road, which screens at the Cannes Film Festival on Thursday.

The new film sees Hardy step into the shoes of Mel Gibson, who played Max in George Miller's 1979 original.

Miller's return to the franchise hits UK screens on Thursday and has been greeted with enthusiastic reviews.

The two-hour post-apocalyptic action movie sees Hardy's Max and another character played by Charlize Theron pursued by villains in a brutal road battle.

Australian director Miller insisted on using real vehicles and shooting in a remote desert in west Africa, resulting in a tough seven-month shoot for the film's stars.

"Now I get it," said Hardy of his director. "But at the time we didn't know what he was thinking.

"Filming it was very hard to understand. My head is on my shoulders and your head is on your shoulders and there's no possible way I could know what you're thinking.

"The gargantuan thing that George was trying to achieve, there was no possible way to articulate what we saw in those two hours on the screen.

"So those seven months on set were long because we just didn't know what he was thinking. You knew it was brilliant, but we just didn't know."

According to reports, the next film in the series will focus on Theron's character, a one-armed, shaven-headed warrior named Imperator Furiosa.

"I'm totally ready to go and do another one," Hardy told the BBC on Wednesday at the Cannes Film Festival.

"It's not case of 'trust me, it works'. I know it works and I can kind of feel the world I'm in."

Mad Max: Fury Road is out in the UK on Thursday.

Source: BBC