This year marks the fifth anniversary of George Miller’s Mad Max: Fury Road, which introduced Charlzie Theron’s baddass Furiosa to the world. In the years following Fury Road’s critical and commercial success, Miller announced his intention to place the spotlight on Furiosa in a prequel movie, though don’t expect Theron to reprise the role.
As George Miller sees it, technology hasn’t advanced enough to properly de-age Charlize Theron enough to make her look like a younger Furiosa. In the filmmaker’s words:
For the longest time, I thought we could just use CG de-aging on Charlize, but I don’t think we’re nearly there yet. Despite the valiant attempts on The Irishman, I think there’s still an uncanny valley. Everyone is on the verge of solving it, particular Japanese video-game designers, but there’s still a pretty wide valley, I believe.
So unless George Miller does a complete 180 in the future, he made it clear while speaking with The New York Times that someone else will be filling the Furiosa shoes for the character’s next cinematic appearance. Who will that be? Right now, that’s hard to say, but there has been some casting movement on the Furiosa prequel recently.
Back in March, it was rumored that Killing Eve star Jodie Comer and Game of Thrones star Richard Madden were being eyed to star in the Furiosa spinoff, with the former being specifically looked at to play the Imperator herself. Several weeks later, a report came out stating that George Miller had been holding auditions for the project over Skype, and among the actors he met with was Emma’s Anya Taylor-Joy.
We’ll just have to wait and see who’s brought aboard to play the younger Furiosa, but George Miller evidently feels comfortable with having an actress in her 20s involved rather than playing around with digital de-aging. While various Marvel Cinematic Universe entires, The Irishman and other high-profile movies have worked digital magic to make its actors look younger (to varying degrees of success), Miller would rather avoid coming anywhere close to the uncanny valley effect, which is reasonable.
Mad Max: Fury Road saw Furiosa teaming up with the eponymous protagonist, played by Tom Hardy, to escape Immortan Joe and guiding the tyrant’s “Five Wives” to safety. Needless to say that the the Furiosa prequel would likely explore how she became a formidable warrior and possibly even show how she lost her arm, but no specific plot details have been disclosed yet.
That being said, Mad Max: Fury Road production designer Colin Gibson, who won an Oscar for his work on the 2015 movie, will be back for the Furiosa prequel, and he noted that this project will show off even more vehicles than Fury Road had (88 shown onscreen, 135 made in total). In other words, the prequel definitely won’t be lacking in vehicular spectacle.
We here at CinemaBlend will keep you updated with how the Furiosa prequel is coming along. George Miller says he aims to make the spinoff once he’s shot the Idris Elba and Tilda Swinton-led Three Thousand Years of Longing, which was supposed to begin filming in spring, but ended up delaying its production, like so many other projects.
