Production Officially Begins on ‘Max Max’ Prequel, ‘Furiosa’

It took 30 years for director George Miller to reassemble the team and the resources to make the fourth Mad Max film, Fury Road. The third Max, Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome, opened in theaters in 1985, and Fury Road debuted, after many stops and starts and a change of leading man, in 2015. So comparatively speaking, the nine years between Fury Road and the upcoming prequel Furiosa is like a drop in the bucket.

While the film is still about two years off, it is officially happening with production now underway. Co-star Chris Hemsworth tweeted today that “a new journey in the Mad Max saga begins” with a photo of the slate for Furiosa. 

The film will star Anya Taylor-Joy, replacing Charlize Theron in the role of Imperator Furiosa from Mad Max: Fury Road. Furiosa is a prequel set decades earlier, and will explain the character’s evolution by drawing on materials that Miller and his collaborators created for Fury Road that laid out Furiosa’s backstory. Almost none of that wound up onscreen in that film, so now Miller is making this prequel that will explore the period in the character’s life

As indicated by the slate, the director of photography on the film is Simon Duggan, whose previous resume includes Live Free or Die Hard, The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor, Knowing, Warcraft, Hacksaw Ridge, and the particularly striking The Great Gatsby from director Baz Luhrmann. (The cinematographer of Fury Road was John Seale, who recently shot Miller’s Three Thousand Years of Longing.)

Many viewers observed that Furiosa felt more like the lead role in Mad Max: Fury Road than Mad Max; Theron’s incredible performance was a big part of that, so it would be even more exciting if she was back as Furiosa in this film. But a new action movie in the Mad Max universe from George Miller is still cause for celebration.

Furiosa is currently scheduled to open in theaters on May 24, 2024.

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