George Miller Addresses Potentially Recasting Character Again for Fury Road Prequel

A Mad Max: Fury Road prequel could recast the title character once again.

By the time Mad Max: Fury Road finally got in front of cameras it was with a new actor in the title role. Tom Hardy took on the part, taking over from Mel Gibson after his time as Max in the original trilogy of features. It wasn’t until recently, as the press cycle kicked into full gear for Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga, that filmmaker and franchise creator George Miller revealed that there’s an idea floating around for yet another movie focusing on Mad Max himself that he might just end up making. Would he need to hire yet another actor for the part though? 

Speaking at press round table for Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga, ComicBook asked Miller this very question. It’s been over a decade since Mad Max: Fury Road wrapped production, and Tom Hardy’s profile as an actor has only gotten bigger, not to mention this planned project is set before the events of Fury Road, so bringing back Gibson seems out of the question (for a litany of reasons). In response to our question, the director replied: “We’ll have to see. I’m not even sure we’ll be doing it.”

As Mad Max fans know, Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga is arriving nine years after Fury Road, but the script for both movies was completed at the same time and had been in Miller’s possession for years prior to production on that movie even starting. Miller revealed that the script for Furiosa was done so long ago that original Furiosa actress Charlize Theron read it before filming began on Fury Road and wanted to make it first. 

“Everyone read the screenplay in order to do Fury Road, not just the actors but everybody,” Miller said. “And (Charlize) read it I would say about, I’m just guessing about six months before. And she said ‘We’ve got to do this first.’ I said, ‘Charlize, we’ve been trying to do this movie for almost a decade and we’re all prepared to do this one. We have to do it.’ But she was very excited about it. And my intention was that we do it next.”

Miller revealed that he intended to keep Charlize Theron in the role after the many changes of the guard that happened at the Warner Bros. parent company, but then he saw several high profile films that de-aged their actors like The Irishman and Gemini Man. After seeing them however he noted that he knew he would after re-cast the part.

“All I was looking at was the technology. I wasn’t looking at performance. I thought we can’t do it. This is someone who goes from 10 to 18, but I had no idea who, who could play it.”

Anya Taylor-Joy steps into the role of Imperator Furiosa for the film, starring in the film alongside Chris Hemsworth as Warlord Dementus. The cast of the film also includes Tom Burke, Lachy Hulme, Nathan Jones, John Howard, Angus Sampson, Charlee Fraser, and Daniel Webber.

In Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga, snatched from the Green Place of Many Mothers, young Furiosa 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. As the two tyrants fight for dominance, Furiosa soon finds herself in a nonstop battle to make her way home. 

Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga arrives in theaters on May 24th.