Mad Max Director Hopes to Shoot Furiosa Spinoff in 2021, Has Met With New Mutants Star for Lead

After waiting 30 years for a sequel in the franchise, 2015’s Mad Max: Fury Road became a massive success, earning itself more Academy Award nominations than any of its peers, with director George Miller reportedly hoping to shoot the spinoff film focusing on Furiosa sometime in 2021. The report from Variety also notes that, while the lead role hasn’t been cast, The New Mutants and Glass star Anya Taylor-Joy is one of the actresses he has met with for the role, who was played by Charlize Theron originally. The discrepancy in age between Theron and Taylor-Joy would seem to confirm a major shift in time for the spinoff.

Previous rumors about the film have also seen names like Killing Eve‘s Jodie Comer as a possibility to take on the role, as well as Game of Thrones star Richard Madden and Aquaman star Yahya Abdul-Mateen II as possible additions to the cast.

Given how long it took Miller to develop Fury Road, some fans are nervous that the planned continuation of the series might never come, but Miller assured fans last summer that both a Furiosa spinoff and other sequels would be coming.

“There are two stories, both involving Mad Max, and also a Furiosa story,” Miller confirmed with IndieWire about the franchise’s future. “We’re still solving, we’ve got to play out the [Warner Bros.] thing, it seems to be pretty clear that it’s going to happen.”

Fury Road first began moving forward back in 1997, only to undergo a number of setbacks and reimaginings. Tom Hardy ultimately scored the titled role, made famous by Mel Gibson in the original films, with production not actually starting until 2012. The complicated nature of the shoot, which included an impressive array of practical stunts, in addition to Miller’s attempts to direct a Justice League film years earlier falling through, and reports that Hardy and Theron experienced animosity with one another resulted in rumors that the film would be a disaster. Clearly, the complicated production paid off immensely.

After the film finally landed in theaters, both Theron and Hardy addressed those reports.

“From what I hear, he’s not like that on every movie—I hear he’s had good experiences,” Theron revealed to WSJ Magazine in 2017. “Maybe the movie is what it is because we struggled so much with each other, and those characters had to struggle so much with each other. If we were chum-chum, maybe the movie would have been 10 times worse.”

Hardy, meanwhile, downplayed those mythical conflicts while praising Theron’s abilities.

“There are these myths that are usually asininely circulated about things that go on on set that aren’t nearly as dramatic as they’re made out to be,” Hardy confessed to The Daily Beast. “There was no hatchet to bury, for me. I’ve always thought—and I still do think—that Charlize is one of the best actresses in the world and a mega-talent. I think she’s brilliant and I would love to work with her again. So there’s really no hatchet for me to bury at all in any way, shape or form.”

Stay tuned for details on the Furiosa film.

Would you like to see Taylor-Joy play Furiosa? Let us know in the comments below or contact Patrick Cavanaugh directly on Twitter to talk all things Star Wars and horror!