Mad Max: Fury Road was all orange sand and teal skies, with the occasional burst of bright shiny chrome, and it looked damn great. According to director George Miller, though, the ideal color scheme for the movie would’ve been no color scheme at all. “The best version of this movie is black and white,” he told us back in May, “but people reserve that for art movies now.”

Miller may yet get his wish for a colorless Fury Road, though. According to a new report, not only does an official black-and-white version of Mad Max: Fury Road, it might actually roll into theaters next year. More about the possible Mad Max: Fury Road black and white release after the jump.

Screen Daily spoke with director George Miller and producer Doug Mitchell about the making of Mad Max: Fury Road. The publication reports that Miller confirmed a black-and-white Mad Max: Fury Road “was his original intent,” while Mitchell added that “an official version exists and could yet receive a theatrical release.”

Miller has spoken at length about his preference for a black-and-white version of Mad Max: Fury Road. Like so:

We spent a lot of time in DI (digital intermediate), and we had a very fine colorist, Eric Whipp. One thing I’ve noticed is that the default position for everyone is to de-saturate post-apocalyptic movies. There’s only two ways to go, make them black and white — the best version of this movie is black and white, but people reserve that for art movies now. The other version is to really go all-out on the color. The usual teal and orange thing? That’s all the colors we had to work with. The desert’s orange and the sky is teal, and we either could de-saturate it, or crank it up, to differentiate the movie. Plus, it can get really tiring watching this dull, de-saturated color, unless you go all the way out and make it black and white.

At the time, he stated he had “demanded” a black-and-white version of Fury Road for the Blu-ray release, which would also feature an option to hear the isolated score as the only soundtrack. But that didn’t come to pass, so now the best we can hope for is that Warner Bros. will indeed re-release Fury Road in black and white.

Although it opened less than a year ago, Mad Max: Fury Road has already had one theatrical re-release: back in September, it returned to IMAX for one week only. If Fury Road does come roaring back in black and white, we can probably expect it to be another limited engagement, or maybe just a one-time-only special event screening.

But even that’s a big if. It’s worth pointing out that Mad Max: Fury Road, for all its charms, has done only okay at the box office. To date it’s earned $375 million — enough to make up for the $150 million it cost to make, but not exactly what you’d call a runaway hit. Maybe Warner Bros. will want to try and wring a little more money out of the film, especially now that it’s doing better than expected in the awards race, but it’s far from a sure thing.

Until then, this fan trailer by Renn Brown below may be our best guess at what a Mad Max: Fury Road black and white release might look like.

For comparison, here’s a regular color version of the film trailer: