Legendary filmmaker George Miller has been doing the rounds to discuss his latest movie Three Thousand Years of Longing, though he also remains hard at work on Mad Max: Fury Road prequel, Furiosa. Starring Anya Taylor-Joe as the badass warrior played by Charlize Theron in the 2015 blockbuster, there's understandably a lot of excitement for this spinoff movie.
Talking to AV Club, Miller explained that he initially created a backstory for Furiosa while working on Fury Road to help Theron gain a better understanding of the character. Ultimately, the writer and director came up with so much material that this movie's screenplay was pretty much written before the last Mad Max movie started shooting!
"When we wrote Mad Max, the task was to tell a story that was always on the run and to see how much the audience could pick up in passing," Miller recalls. "That was one of the tricks of Mad Max: Fury Road, that there would be references to things of where she’s from, why they’re doing things, but it was always on the run. There were very few moments of quiet."
"We never explained how she lost her arm. We never explain what the actual Green Place Of Many Mothers was. We never explained the workings of the Citadel. So we had the screenplay virtually complete before we shot Fury Road."
"We did it because it arose out of wanting to explain to everybody who Furiosa was - to Charlize when she took on the role, and to all the actors and the designers and everybody else working on the Citadel and so on," he continues. "The feeling was, gee, this is a pretty good screenplay, and then I kept saying to myself, 'if Fury Road works, I’d really like to tell this story.'"
That story is now set to be told in Furiosa, and based on what we've seen in set photos, it's going to be a fun ride. This story is clearly one that Miller has been thinking about for a very long time, and we've no doubt the filmmaker has plenty of surprises in store for us as he continues exploring the chaotic and crazy world of Mad Max.
Furiosa is set to be released in theaters on May 24, 2024.