The rumors are true. George Miller is working on a Furiosa movie as his next film in the Mad Max franchise. Only, it won’t be Charlize Theron playing the character.
Speaking to the New York Times, Miller confirmed that he has begun the casting process to find a younger actress to play Furiosa, working from a script that he’s had written since the production of Mad Max: Fury Road. He wrote the script so that Theron and the other characters would have knowledge of their backstories.
“It was purely a way of helping Charlize and explaining it to ourselves,” Miller said.
Miller had hoped that he’d be able to get Theron to reprise the role, using de-aging technology that has become prevalent in Hollywood, but in the end, he decided against it.
“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,” Miller said. “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.”
Soon after the Times published this story though, Theron took to Twitter to seemingly give her approval to Miller for the film.
While Theron won’t be returning (casting rumors suggest Miller has auditioned Split’s Anya Taylor-Joy, among others), Fury Road’s production designer Colin Gibson will, along with cinematographer John Seale, who semi-retired after Fury Road.
“I’ve had wonderful opportunities to work after Fury Road, as you can imagine, and I’ve passed on all of them,” Seale told the Times. “But on Fury Road, I told George, ‘If anybody else rings, I’m retired. If you ring, we’ll have lunch.’ And seven years later, he rang.”
As for when this movie—which could dig into tantalizing hints Furiosa gives about her past in Fury Road, like her experiences in “the Green Place”—will be made, that’s the issue. Miller had planned to make it after his next movie, Three Thousand Years of Longing, which stars Tilda Swinton and Idris Elba. The covid-19 pandemic has pushed that shoot, though, delaying Miller’s ability to start on anything else.
“So after we finish it, and hopefully everything settles down with the pandemic, we’ll see what the world allows us to do with Furiosa,” Miller said.
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