'Furiosa': Anya Taylor-Joy Stars in First Trailer for 'Mad Max: Fury Road' Prequel

The first trailer for Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga has been released, starring Anya Taylor-Joy as a younger version of Charlize Theron's character from Mad Max: Fury Road. In this prequel story, a young Imperator Furiosa "finds herself caught in the crossfire between two tyrannical warlords," after being taken from her home in the Green Place of Many Mothers. Check out the full trailer below!

The official synopsis for Furious reads: "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." Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga opens in theaters on May 24, 2024.

Alongside Taylor-Joy's Furiosa, Chris Hemsworth stars as Warlord Dementus. A younger version of Immortan Joe — previously portrayed by Hugh Keays-Byrne in Fury Road — will appear in Furiosa, though it is currently unclear who will be portraying him this time around. Additional cast members include Tom Burke, Alyla Browne, Nathan Jones, Angus Sampson, Quaden Bayles, Daniel Webber, and Lachy Hulme.

Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga is directed by George Miller, from a script he wrote with Nico Lathouris. The franchise originated with Miller's Mad Max in 1979, with Mel Gibson portraying the apocalyptic road warrior. he went on to make Mad Max 2 (1982) and Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome (1985), before putting the franchise to rest for 30 years, until the critically acclaimed Mad Max: Fury Road in 2015, which starred Tom Hardy as the iconic protagonist.

In a 2022 interview with the L.A. Times, Miller was asked if the success of Fury Road created any pressure for him around making Furiousa. "It's not a question I've really asked myself," he replied. "You're striving to make each film better but not necessarily more. You're not looking for more, you're looking for it to be as good as it can be. You're definitely looking to not repeat what you've just done and you are looking to make it, if you like, uniquely familiar. It's got to be its own thing."

"After I made the first Mad Max all those years ago, I didn't want to make another Mad Max film," he continued. "Then I made a second one. And for me, personally, it was on the condition that I was able to overcome all the mistakes that I thought I learned from the first film. So the second film had to be different from the first. So it was a different film in tone, in style and everything. The only thing really in common was that it was Mel Gibson. The third film, the same, and that was Thunderdome. They had to be different. Otherwise we were just repeating ourselves."

Miller added, "And then I remember on Fury Road, that had to be different again. People were saying, 'Oh, can you make it like Road Warrior? Road Warrior was really the best of those films.' And I thought, 'Well, wait a minute, that was 30 years ago. Everything's changed. Not only have I changed personally, the world's changed. Cinema has changed, the way we read cinema has changed, the way we make cinema's changed. If we were just to go back and I'm doing a remake of that film, we'd be fools.' So it had to be different. [Furiosa] is the first one which had to allude to a previous film, to Fury Road in its design, in its characters, in its world, because it was a prequel. And so we were much more rigorous in that regard."