Mad Max: Fury Road introduced us to Charlize Theron’s Imperator Furiosa in 2015. We haven’t stopped thinking about the inimitable character since. She blazed across the dusty Wasteland and into our souls. Fury Road writer and director George Miller hasn’t let go of her either. In 2019, he expressed interest in making two more Mad Max movies—one of them being a prequel story about Furiosa. Filming for that tale began in 2022. And now, finally, we have our first trailer and images for the film starring Anya Taylor-Joy as a young Furiosa. And we’ve even learned where in the franchise timeline the movie takes place and more about the movie’s cast, including the reasoning for the Furiosa recast. It was all worth the wait because Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga looks amazing.
Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga Trailer and Synopsis
The trailer teases Furiosa’s origins and Taylor-Joy showing, even in a couple minutes, how much she is embracing the powerful role. She has a large shaved head to fill, but by all appearances, she’s doing just fine. Set 45 years after the Collapse, Furiosa must find her way home. And we know the world, so we know it won’t be easy. Knowing how her story continues makes watching her challenging odyssey somewhat easier. Only somewhat. And Chris Hemsworth as Warlord Dementus? We’re already sold.
Furiosa: A Mad Max’s Saga official synopsis is as follows:
As the world fell, young Furiosa is snatched from the Green Place of Many Mothers and falls into the hands of a great Biker Horde led by the Warlord Dementus. Sweeping through the Wasteland, they come across the Citadel presided over by The Immortan Joe. While the two Tyrants war for dominance, Furiosa must survive many trials as she puts together the means to find her way home.
Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga Casting Updates
We recently learned that Immortan Joe will now be played by Lachy Hulme. Hulme replaces Immortan Joe’s original actor from Mad Max: Fury Road, Hugh Keays-Byrne, who passed away in 2020. Hulme will also play Rizzdale Pell, a gang member who follows Hemsworth’s Dementus in the movie.
More About Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga: Timeline, Recast, and Other Intel
Director George Miller additionally clarified where Furiosa fits on the Mad Max franchise timeline. He shared, “This story happens 15 years directly before Mad Max: Fury Road, and it runs straight into it, and Max is lurking around somewhere in this story, but it’s really the story of Furiosa and how she got to be… A lot of the film will be familiar, and a lot of it’s new, which we haven’t seen before.”
Additionally, Miller has revealed why he chose to recast the role of Furiosa in Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga. Of course, Charlize Theron originally played the role in Mad Max: Fury Road. However, instead of using digital de-aging technology, Miller opted for a recast of the Furiosa role, bringing Anya Taylor-Joy into the prequel movie.
Miller shared the reasoning behind the recast with Empire Magazine, which we saw via IGN. He notes, “It definitely would have been Charlize [had Furiosa been filmed before Fury Road]… I began thinking, ‘Oh, maybe we could do de-aging.’ Then I watched really masterful filmmakers like Ang Lee and Martin Scorsese, doing Gemini Man and The Irishman, and I saw that it hadn’t been licked. All you’d be watching is, ‘Look how well the technology works?’ It would not have been persuasive.” And that’s really fair enough.
With all this in mind, get us back to the Wasteland now, please and thank you. Miller wrote the script with Nico Lathouris and is back in the director’s role.
When Is Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga‘s Release Date?
Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga will arrive in theaters on May 24, 2024.
Originally published on November 30, 2023.