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Witness Furiosa, the highly anticipated prequel to the Best Picture nominated action masterpiece Mad Max: Fury Road. The Anya Taylor-Joy-led film, which will be the fifth movie in director George Miller’s Mad Max franchise, is revving up its engines and preparing to premiere into the wasteland that is the 2024 box office. Here’s everything we know about Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga, including the cast, the crew, the plot and a new trailer.
When will Furiosa Be Released?
Following the critical and commercial success of Fury Road, Miller and Warner Bros., the studio behind the film, pursued possible sequels and prequels. Furiosa, which was announced in 2020, was originally supposed to be released on June 23, 2023, which obviously didn’t happen. Warner Bros. announced in the fall of 2021 that the premiere had been pushed back to Furiosa’s current opening date of May 24, 2024, which is Memorial Day weekend. It will open against The Garfield Movie, starring Chris Pratt, and Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes.
There are reports, however, that Furiosa might premiere at the Cannes Film Festival, which would make sense, as Fury Road premiered at the iconic festival to much acclaim. Cannes kicks off on May 14, 2024.
Who is behind Furiosa?
George Miller, the genius filmmaker behind all four previous movies in the Mad Max franchise (and also Babe: Pig in the City) returns for Furiosa. In addition to directing the film, he also co-wrote the screenplay with Nick Lathouris, who co-wrote Fury Road.
Margaret Sixel, Miller’s wife and film editor who won a well-deserved Oscar for her work on Fury Road, returns as well. Other members of the Fury Road crew are back for Furiosa, too, including production designer Colin Gibson, sound mixer Ben Osmo, makeup designer Lesley Vanderwalt and costume designer Jenny Beavan. Junkie XL, who composed the music for Fury Road, is also scoring Furiosa.
Who are the stars, and who do they play?
In Mad Max: Fury Road, Charlize Theron played the rebelling war rig driver Imperator Furiosa, a tough-as-nails woman who allied with Tom Hardy’s “Mad Max” Rockatansky as they attempted to free five of the tyrannical Immortan Joe’s “wives” from his captivity. Neither Theron nor Hardy returns for Furiosa, which is a prequel that shows how Furiosa first came into Immortan Joe’s sphere, well before she ever met Max.
Anya Taylor-Joy, star of films like The Witch, The Menu, and the Netflix series The Queen’s Gambit, was cast in the title role in October of 2020. She plays a younger version of the character, a young woman who was kidnapped from her home and thrust into the middle of a dystopian war over gas and resources. The movie will reveal how Furiosa lost her arm.
Alyla Browne, a child actress who played a young version of the main character (Tilda Swinton) in Miller’s last movie, Three Thousand Years of Longing, plays an even younger version of Taylor-Joy’s Furiosa in this film.
Chris Hemsworth, Marvel’s Thor himself, co-stars as one of the main villains — presumably the warlord Dementus. (Hemsworth is Australian, meaning he’ll fit right into the Outback setting.)
“He’s a complicated individual. He’s a very violent, insane, brutal person that is born from the Wasteland,” Hemsworth said of his character during an appearance at the Brazilian Comic-Con CCXP in late November. “He has been birthed into a space where it’s kill or be killed. He’s learned to rule with an iron fist. There’s a charisma to him and it’s a very manipulative charisma.”
Tom Burke, who played Orson Welles in Netflix’s Mank, also stars, and he’s rumored to play the leader of one of the rival factions vying for power in the wasteland — perhaps the younger Immortan Joe, seen in the trailer having a face-off with Hemsworth’s character? (There has been no official confirmation of who either Burke or Hemsworth is playing, making their character names conjecture at this point.)
Burke replaced Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom star Yahya Abdul-Mateen II in the film after he had to drop out due to scheduling issues.
Nathan Jones and Angus Sampson are set to reprise their roles from Fury Road, where they played Rictus Erectus and The Organic Mechanic, respectively. Quaden Bayles, an 11-year-old boy with dwarfism whom Miller cast in a small part in Three Thousand Years of Longing, appears in Furiosa as well.
What is the story?
Here is the official plot synopsis for the film:
“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.”
This being a Mad Max movie, presumably those trials will involve some of the sickest, most jaw-dropping vehicular stunts you’ve ever seen, and they’re all (mostly!) practical filmmaking. The first trailer does seem to feature a lot of CGI, but it’s possible the effects are not totally finalized.
What do we know from the trailer?
Basically, nothing from the making of Furiosa leaked, so very few details are known about the movie at this point. (That’s perhaps an upside to filming in the middle of nowhere in Australia’s outback and then having a series of strikes prevent anybody from doing any promotion.)
The first trailer and promotional stills made their debut at the biggest Brazilian Comic-Con, CCXP, on Thursday, November 30. The trailer doesn’t reveal too much of the plot, but shows a young Furiosa after she’s been kidnapped from her home, eventually growing up and becoming a capable warrior as Hemsworth’s character squares off with Immortan Joe.
The CCXP trailer also revealed the new subtitle for the film, Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga.
By James Grebey
Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga opens in theaters on May 24, 2024. Sign up here to be notified when tickets are on sale on Fandango.
