When the Mad Max prequel Furiosa was announced, fans were excited to learn more about Imperator Furiosa. They looked forward to seeing Oscar winner Charlize Theron return for another crack at the role. Unfortunately, things didn’t work out as Anya Taylor-Joy is playing a younger version of the beloved survivalist. With the prequel coming to theaters soon, Mad Max impresario George Miller explained why Taylor-Joy replaced Theron.
The road to getting a Mad Max: Fury Road follow-up has been filled with multiple rumors and false starts before Taylor-Joy and Chris Hemsworth were cast. Miller felt pressured by audiences craving for more Mad Max. Unbeknownst to them, the celebrated filmmaker has been working on Furiosa’s story for years. He even shared the Fury Road cast and crew, including Theron, the script before shooting the sequel’s production. Miller revealed to ComicBook how Theron reacted to reading the Furiosa script, saying:
So, everyone read a script a few years ago, the concept art and everything, and everyone read the screenplay in order to do Fury Road, not just the actors but everybody. [Charlize] read it 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.
Theron appeared to gung ho to expand on the antiheroine’s story beyond the combative dynamic with Max. Of course, she was on to something as moviegoers fell in love with Furiosa when she showed up on screen. Unfortunately, the prequel’s development was held up by shifts in Hollywood. This delay caused some issues with keeping the Fast X star in the title role. Theron’s age came into play as Miller contemplated using de-aging technology to make her a younger Furiosa. However, the The Witches of Eastwick director vetoed the idea upon seeing some movies use the technology, saying:
My intention was that we do it next, but then we’ve now gone through the third parent company of Warner Bros. — there’s about four different regimes. That settled down by the time we got to actually do Furiosa, but the best part of a decade had gone by. And then I thought, ‘OK, we could still do it with Charlize.’ Then I saw these other movies like The Irishman, where they made people younger and particularly I saw Gemini Man. I was looking at the technology; I wasn’t looking at performance. I thought, ‘We can’t do it.’
Miller was unsatisfied with those movies’ results. Of course, the Oscar-winning director wasn’t alone in his opinion on the de-aging tech in those movies. Seeing these films led him to pivot toward a younger actress rather than face weeks of post-production making Charlize Theron appear younger (not that she needed it). This realization led to a replacement search, ending with Anya Taylor-Joy becoming the survivalist. Of course, this decision led to Theron being heartbroken over the recast despite wanting to return for the spinoff. The recast didn’t create hard feelings between the Hollywood A-listers as both actresses praised each other.
You can watch Furiosa’s origin story when Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga arrives in theaters on May 24. Before the prequel takes over the box office, you can rewatch Mad Max: Fury Road through a Hulu subscription. Follow the Fury Road rewatch by revisiting the original Mad Max trilogy with an HBO Max subscription.