Following Mad Max’s massive comeback with 2015’s Fury Road, George Miller is set to tell another chapter in the post-apocalyptic franchise with his prequel film, Furiosa, where Anya Taylor-Joy will play a younger version of Charlize Theron’s beloved character. With Furiosa’s filming now underway, Miller recently hinted at another Mad Max prequel that he’s also spent time writing as well.
When speaking to the process of building out the story of Fury Road further with his upcoming prequel, George Miller revealed that Furiosa was actually a movie born during the production process of Fury Road. While they were making the 2015 movie, they felt like they needed backstories for Furiosa, along with many of the other characters in order to explain to themselves and the actors about the world surrounding the movie’s events. While talking about that, Miller went on to say the following:
We also wrote, not a screenplay, but almost in novel form, Nico Lathouris and I, what happened to Max in that year before, and that’s something that we’ll look at further down the track later.
During Miller’s conversation with The AV Club, the filmmaker revealed that he has written a story about Mad Max one year prior to the events of Fury Road, and he’s planning to decide what to do with it, likely after Furiosa has been finished. George Miller continued with these words as well:
In telling each other the story of Furiosa, everything in Fury Road had to be explained. In my mind, I have a back story of the Doof Warrior, who plays the guitar. How could a blind man who all he can do is play a guitar, how does he get to survive in a wasteland where everybody is in extremis? How did he come to be there? So we wrote little stories for every character when we made Fury Road.
Could Tom Hardy’s Mad Max get a prequel film next? It sounds like it’s entirely possible, but George Miller is focusing on Furiosa for the time being. Furiosa will tell the origins of Imperator Furiosa in the span of 15 years, which is vastly different from Fury Road taking place within three days. The movie is also set to star Chris Hemsworth as the film’s villain, with Nathan Jones, Angus Sampson, Tom Burke and Goran D. Kleut also among the cast.
What’s promising about these upcoming Mad Max concepts is how they were born out of the own filmmakers’ curiosity to build out their world rather than a studio simply greenlighting another Mad Max movie. Perhaps, depending on how Furiosa does, George Miller will decide how he’ll make his Mad Max prequel. Will it remain somewhat of a novel or hit the big screen?
While we wait for Furiosa, which moved from the 2023 movie release schedule to 2024 following its delays, George Miller’s latest movie is called Three Thousand Years Of Longing. It’s a fantasy film starring Idris Elba as a Djinn who is unleashed by Tilda Swinton’s British scholar character, Alithea Binnie. Three Thousand Years Of Longing is now playing in theaters.