Furiosa: George Miller Confirms Prequel's Place in Mad Max Timeline

At CCXP on Thursday, Warner Bros. Pictures unleashed the first trailer for Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga, the prequel to Mad Max: Fury Road. Director George Miller has not clarified how long before Mad Max: Fury Road the Furiosa movie is set.  Miller tells Omelete that Furiosa begins 15 years before Mad Max: Fury Road but that the prequel will lead straight into the 2015 film's story, and also hinted that, while the film is focused on Furiosa, played by Anya Taylor-Joy after Charlize Theron originated the role in Mad Max: Fury Road, franchise hero Max Rockatansky may be hiding out somewhere on the narrative's periphery.

"This story happens 15 years directly before Mad Max: Fury Road, and it runs straight into it, and Max is lurking around somewhere in this story, but it's really the story of Furiosa and how she got to be," Miller says. "A lot of the film will be familiar, and a lot of it's new, which we haven't seen before."

What is Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga about?

Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga is the prequel to Mad Max: Fury Road (which moved to a new streaming service following the Furiosa trailer's release) that reveals how Furiosa left the Green Place of Many Mothers and ended up serving Immortan Joe. Warner Bros. Pictures released the following official Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga story synopsis:

"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.

Why is Mad Max: Fury Road getting a prequel?

Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga is the first spinoff of the main Mad Max film series, which spans Mad Max (1979), Mad Max 2 a.k.a. The Road Warrior (1981), Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome (1985), and Mad Max: Fury Road (2015). Miller has said that he conceived the story of Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga while writing Mad Max: Fury Road.

"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 previously told The AV Club. "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, and 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. 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.'"

He continued, "So it came about, I'm not going to say accidentally, but it came out of a need to explain [Fury Road's] world which, as I said, essentially happened over three days and two nights," Miller continued. "It's really trying to explain how that world came to be. We also wrote, not a screenplay, but almost in novel form, Nico Lathouris and I, what happened to Max in that year before, and that's something that we'll look at further down the track later. But in telling each other the story of Furiosa, everything in Fury Road had to be explained. In my mind, I have a back story of the Doof Warrior, who plays the guitar. How could a blind man who all he can do is play a guitar, how does he get to survive in a wasteland where everybody is in extremis? How did he come to be there? So we wrote little stories for every character when we made Fury Road."

Prequel story Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga is one of two films Miller said he'd make if Mad Max: Fury Road proved successful (and it did). The second is a sequel titled Mad Max: The Wasteland, which is in development.

Who is in the Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga cast?

Anya Taylor-Joy leads the Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga cast as the title character, Imperator Furiosa. Chris Hemsworth plays the villain, Warlord Dementus.

Alyla Browne and Tom Burke appear in Furiosa in supporting roles. The film also stars Nathan Jones as Rictus Erectus, Angus Sampson as The Organic Mechanic, Quaden Bayles, Daniel Webber as War Boy, and Lachy Hulme.

When is Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga's release date?

George Miller produced and directed Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga. He also co-wrote the film's script with Nico Lathouris.

Warner Bros. Pictures is eyeing the 2024 Cannes Film Festival for Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga's debut. Furiosa will open in theaters in Australia on May 23rd and worldwide on May 24th.