Director George Miller's Mad Max: Fury Road prequel Furiosa is set to be the biggest movie production ever filmed in Australia's New South Wales (NSW).
Premier Gladys Berejiklian announced the movie would be “the largest film ever to be filmed” in NSW, per a report from The Sydney Morning Herald. Furiosa is also expected to inject at least $350 million into the state’s economy and create upwards of 850 jobs.
Miller kicked off his post-apocalyptic franchise with 1979's Mad Max, a pulpy action/thriller he shot in Melbourne. The movie would go on to become a cult success and led to two more sequels, with Mel Gibson reprising his role as the police officer-turned wanderer "Mad" Max Rockatansky.
Tom Hardy later took over the eponymous role for 2015's Mad Max: Fury Road, which also introduced Charlize Theron as the character Furiosa. However, unlike its predecessors, the bulk of filming on Fury Road took place in Nambia, after heavy rains caused wildflowers to blossom in the desert of Broken Hill, NSW, where Miller had originally intended to shoot the movie.
Now that a legal dispute with Warner Bros. over unpaid earnings on Fury Road has been settled, Miller said he is looking forward to shooting the next Mad Max movie in Australia in 2022. "Since we started Fury Road I think there’s been six different regimes at Warner Bros,” Miller added. “Now it’s stabilised very much and they’re able to basically pay attention coherently to the films they want to make and this is one of them."
While Miller initially planned to digitally de-age Theron so she could reprise her Fury Road role for the prequel, he ultimately decided to cast The Queen Gambit's Anya Taylor-Joy as a younger version of the title character instead. He also revealed that Furiosa "happens over many years," as opposed to a few days and nights like Fury Road. ”You try to make films that are ‘uniquely familiar,'" Miller explained. "[Furiosa] will be familiar to those people who know Mad Max, and in particular Fury Road, but also it will be unique.”
Helmed by George Miller, Mad Max: Furiosa stars Anya Taylor-Joy, Chris Hemsworth and Yahya Abdul-Mateen II. The film is currently set to debut on June 23, 2023.
Source: The Sydney Morning Herald