Highlights:

  • Director George Miller has teased that there could be further prequels beyond Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga for the Mad Max universe.
  • Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga, starring Anya Taylor-Joy, is the origin story for the title character first introduced in Mad Max: Fury Road.
  • The new prequel would follow the story of Max in the year before the events of Fury Road.

George Miller Expanding The Max-Verse

Apparently, Mad Max’s car, The Interceptor, makes a brief appearance in the upcoming Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga and director George Miller says it’s more than a little fan service. In an interview with EW, the creator of everyone’s favorite dystopian car opera has been thinking about at least one other prequel and The Interceptor’s cameo is a nod toward where he’d like to see the franchise go. And it sounds like, if he gets the chance to expand that universe, we’ll get to see Max back in the driver’s seat.

Origin Story

 

The much anticipated Furiosa is the origin story of a main character we met in the franchise’s fourth film, Mad Max: Fury Road. In that story, set decades after the events of the original Mad Max, desert wanderer Max became enmeshed in the scheme of Imperator Furiosa (Charlize Theron), the warlord Imorten Joe’s most valued lieutenant, as she betrayed him, liberated his wives, and made a break for her homeland, “The Green Place”. Furiosa tells the story of how she was stolen by Joe and brought to his desert fortress The Citadel where she became the toughest of his war chiefs, somehow losing an arm in the process.

RELATED: 7 Things We Can’t Wait to See in Furiosa

Still of Charlize Theron in Mad Max: Fury Road

Miller said that while developing Fury Road he and his partners created detailed backstories for both Furiosa and Max so that the cast of that film could be fully informed about the world and characters. This resulted in lots of story and detail about both characters that didn’t show up on screen in Fury Road.

Mad Max Lurking

In his interview with EW, Miller explained “In doing what we did in the preparation of Mad Max: Fury Road, we also wrote what happened to Max in the year before we encounter him in [that film]. And as we get towards the end of [Furiosa], the chronology, basically, we had to see that Mad Max was lurking around somewhere because we do know what happened. The writers know what happened to Mad Max in that year before, and we have a whole story of that, which I would like to do sometime if I get the chance.”

For fans of the Mad Max franchise that is a tantalizing idea. With 1979’s Mad Max, George Miller invented what many people consider the urtext of the dystopian wasteland genre and launched Mel Gibson’s career at the same time. Miller’s films created a distinct (and sometimes mystifying) cinematic language that combined high-energy car chases and ultra-violence with the lonesome hero tropes of the Hollywood Westerns. Mel Gibson played, Max, a cop wandering the apocalyptic backroads in a supercharged interceptor, in two more sequels before hanging up his leather pants.

RELATED: Prepare for an Odyssey With First Trailer and Photos for Furiosa

mad max: fury road

In 2015, Tom Hardy strapped those leathers back on in Fury Road, to mixed acclaim. Though that film bore Max’s name in the title, it acted more as a stealth launch for the Furiosa character who managed to breathe new energy and life into the series. Now that we’ve got her origin story, what new tales does Miller have planned for Max? And will Hardy return to the role?

Those are tomorrow’s problems. Because right now we have Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga, starring Anya Taylor Joy as the lead, to look forward to on May 24th when she drives like hell into theaters everywhere. Because we love you, we’ve reposted both trailers below.

Do you have theories about what might be in a Mad Max prequel? Tell us all about it in the comments.

Movie Review: MAD MAX: FURY ROAD

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